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DARPA Semifinalists Selected
An anonymous reader writes "DARPA has selected thirty-six teams as Urban Challenge semifinalists to participate in the National Qualification Event. Both the webcast and press release can be found on the official site. Dr. Tony Tether reports that only 1 of the top 5 previous teams was rated in the top 5 of teams this year and 3 of the top 5 were not in the challenge finals last year. 'The semifinalists will compete in a final qualifying round at the site on October 26th and be whittled down to 20 teams. Those teams' vehicles will have to perform like cars with drivers to safely conduct a simulated battlefield supply mission on a 60-mile urban course, obeying California traffic laws while merging into traffic, navigating traffic circles and avoiding obstacles -- all in fewer than six hours. The team to successfully complete the mission with the fastest time wins.'"
What could probably go wrong?
and GO GATORS!!!
Go Gators!
Anyone else think of the movie "Maximum Overdrive" when they first heard about this?
Assuming that we are still in Afghanistan in ten years ... and I wouldn't bet that we won't be ... a fleet of these vehicles could really even things up with the Taliban. Imagine the Taliban ambush a vehicle to kidnap the occupants and too late they realize that the occupants are dummies. The vehicle explodes. YES! The terrorists get a taste of their own medicine.
How do they put a seatbelt on the computer?
"The team to successfully complete the mission with the fastest time wins."
Now, exactly how many points per pedestrian?
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
It'll be interesting to see what kind of modifications they make to the course, either to add signage and other course markings, or to degrade what already exists to make it more challenging. I was particularly interested in finding out that they'll be using the section of the base (now the Southern California Logistics Airport) that the Army's been using for MOUT (military operations in urban terrain) training.
If the competitors aren't careful, there might be some new wrecks to add to scenario training...
I for one welcome our never-stopping-when-making-a-right-turn overlords.
:)
Oh, that's not the law? It sure seems like it.
Science did fine for thousands of years before the creation of atom weapons, space bombers, and killer drones.
o veries_and_inventions l ilei#Physics
While I do agree with your sentiment, I'm afraid that science and war have been hand in hand for the vast majority of history.
"Archimedes has also been credited with improving the power and accuracy of the catapult, and with inventing the odometer during the First Punic War."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes#Disc
"In 1595-1598, Galileo devised and improved a Geometric and Military Compass suitable for use by gunners and surveyors. This expanded on earlier instruments designed by Niccolò Tartaglia and Guidobaldo del Monte. For gunners, it offered, in addition to a new and safer way of elevating cannons accurately, a way of quickly computing the charge of gunpowder for cannonballs of different sizes and materials.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Ga
And of course we know well what happened to the inventions and insights of Noble and Einstein. Science and the waging of war feed each other back and forth. Militaries are always eager to use new technologies and scientists are usually eager to for the kind of resources and funding that militaries have access to.
We are all just people.
The guy in charge of uber-autonomous robots is named TETHER?
You can't make this stuff up.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
"...obeying California traffic laws while..."
:")
I'm working from memory here, so I could be wrong, but to the best of my recollection, Calif. Motor Vehicle Code stipulates that a motor vehicle is required to be under the control of an approved driver at all times.
Hell - break one, break 'em all
I also agree with the premise. The US government is the biggest offender in this perpetual arms race with the world and themselves - but like many military inventions this has a civil purpose. It's not a new bio-bomb that can kill people more effectively, but a car that can rescue people and supply troops. It should lead to some useful inventions that we could be seeing in the commercial market soon enough.
My only worry with new military technology is that it will progress to the point where troops (American troops) will have no contact with the people they are liberating, killing or whatever - it could totally dehumanise war, making it all the easier for governments to fight senseless wars.
Ummm, three things. One, a car can be remotely controlled a lot cheaper than what's being suggested here. Two it's not just any old islamists. It's KEY figures. Three a predator drone with a cruise missile can go were bullets can't. I.E. Pakistan.
Interesting how DARPA connects a battlefield simulation to driving across California. I assume the test-track will the I-10.
"MALLEIS MILITO" (I Soldier With A Hammer) 62ND ENGINEER BATTALION
The had a race to see who could build a robot to navigate across the desert the fastest, and none of the entrants completed the course... so they say, "okay, now who can navigate through a city the fastest?" Doesn't seem to me like the right time to raise the bar.
Thank god my right-hand driving country does not have vast oil reserves; driving on the wrong side of the road would be too freaky.
Science only exists because the militaries of the world exist to do violence against the savages who would destroy it. Like it or not, things like science, technology, civilization, and society only exist because people are willing to protect their existence by means of physical force. Science owes its existence to the military, not the other way around. I wish it didn't have to be this way, but with 6 billion humans on the planet, even if all but one were committed pacifists, the only effect would be to make the last one king. He may have to club 10 pacifists to death before finding one to agree to serve him, but the end effect would be the same. And believe me, the probability of moral failure of the human being is far greater than 1 six-billionth.
Disagree? Let's apply the scientific method. Take a given society, and remove the institutionalized violence within. All the militaries and cops and assorted men with guns, disarmed and assigned to other work. See how long science continues to exist.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Cool, if you want to halt an invasion you just have to place a stop sign at a strategic point. I love robotic vehicles that obey Cal. traffic laws...
"People who are willing to sacrifice essential freedoms for security deserve neither freedom nor security."
B F
Please, this is being created by the military. The automated driving system will be broken more ofter than not. While I can imagine techology progressing to where a people-less war could be fought, I can't see a military pulling it off. Too much will break. "American parts, Russian parts. All made in Taiwan!"
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
Those teams' vehicles will have to perform like cars with drivers to safely conduct a simulated battlefield supply mission on a 60-mile urban course, obeying California traffic laws while merging into traffic, navigating traffic circles and avoiding obstacles -- all in fewer than six hours. The team to successfully complete the mission with the fastest time wins.'"
As an extra incentive, the team that kills the fewest pedestrians and bicyclists wins a case of Coke.
The death of Archimedes, among many other scientists during warfare, gives the lie to your words
Military might does not exist to defend science or civilisation, or any of the other things which we like to tell ourselves; far from it. It is used most often (including in our time) to brutalise others into submission and fealty, often at the cost of all of these values we pretend to hold dear. It's entirely unconnected to the existence of science or civil society, which is dependent on a stable wealthy society, not a warlike one - note that a strong military is not necessarily linked to a peaceful society or good science. Further to that, the use of force (or the threat of it) within civil society is not necessarily related to the use of force between nations in wars, so your argument of removing all military and police is really tilting at windmills.
This meme of virtue and physical force nurturing a delicate civilisation has been with us since the Romans, and it was a lie then, as it is now.
It's sad that many of our best endeavours have been linked to war (Archimedes for example also designed anti-siege equipment), but it doesn't mean that war produces the best of our science, or is the best use of our time. e.g. things like the atom bomb and nuclear power are often used as an example of advances given by warfare, however the groundwork for that was laid long before the second world war broke out, in efforts unrelated to warfare, by people like Rutherford and Bohr. Radar was discovered in 1904, etc, etc. If we spent half the time and money (not all but half say) we do killing each other on perfecting science and technology like this for civilian use, we would be a lot further on. That's a choice the US is confronted with today, and I don't believe they've chosen the balance wisely.
It would also be useful for a human driver that was hurt in such a way that would make it difficult to drive out of harm to be able to puch a "go to the medic" button. Also, the motivation for this project is up for debate, especially since this technology is already being created by military contractors independently. Maybe this is to create opportunities for commercial opperations to learn how to make this technology. Maybe this is just to try to enlighten the public on what has been researched for years and will soon come to use.
...the Talibs put a "No entry" traffic sign on a supply route?
This is Slashdot. Common sense is futile. You will be modded down.
Ether they are taking traffic jams into account or they dont expect these robots to do more than 10-15mph.
:)
So, what if they all come into the finish line with traffic violation tickets under their windshields for moving too slow? Would they then award it to the one with the fewest tickets?
Corse Im assuming that by 'following California traffic laws' that they would be required to have licence plates, not tailgate, travel the speed limit, etc. Wouldnt that also meen the robots would need valid drivers licences, insurance, and registration?
Yes, while most Internet technologies have been the work of private companies, Universities and research institutions like CERN the American military had a significant role in developing the early technology. What I was saying is their technologies designed for more effective killing can sometimes lead to a benefit to the general public, and the Internet is a very good example of this. (Although not by any stretch of the imagination can you say that it was entirely their creation.)
In response to lessthan - I was saying I don't want a people-less war. Because it's impossible to be so, it would probably end up (definitely in the near future) with one side being people-less (America) and the the other side (whoever) being a people's army. While I welcome any advance in civil engineering and human understanding I wish weapons of war had never been developed. The world would be a far better and more democratic place if all wars were fought with sticks and stones - the greater number of people wins. The way it is now soldiers can be totally desensitized to killing, destroying houses with "smart bombs" and firing ICBMs and cruise missiles without any contact with the people whose lives they are ending. The development of military technology is a sad side-effect of human technological and infrastructural progression. While I might be speaking a little out of my depth here with my patchy knowledge of history, but I think the way such a small number of Romans held such a dominance over so many people was due to their superior military tactics and technology, and this problem has only become more and more prevalent in the modern world with the development of guns, tanks and nukes.
It's more helpful to the applications, not the technology itself.
20 years ago, I worked in support of robotics projects, at Carnegie-Mellon - part of the DARPA Strategic Computing initiative (a response to the Japanese Fifth-Generation Computing Project)
Some of my co-workers at MIT were concerned about military plans to use these vehicles, although the missions most often talked about were scout missions and smoke-laying (preparing the battlefield for attack by the humans, generally these scenarios were set in Germany)
The concerns about the military plans were premature then (it was a challenge to even drive reliably at 5 miles per hour). Recently, I have heard media coverage of plans to give weapons control to the software.
It is too easy, even given state of the art software, to subvert the sensors and other systems and fool software into shooting into something inappropriate, injuring civilians or non-combatants. Human have redundant sensors, working stereo vision, and common-sense reasoning capabilities.
Humans are fallible in different ways, but I don't support giving decisions on lethal force to software. Keeping a human in the loop is essential.
Right, and as long as the media keeps sticking its nose in the military's business, there will be a human in the loop. The military is PC paranoid, if there is even a hint of 'military machine rampage: more at 11' that will be the end of the project. They will take precautions.
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math