Slashdot Mirror
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?
No more.
Enough.
Our minds are not for sale to kill our fellow man.
Einstein would not approve. Nor would Eisenhower.
We while away the hours dreaming and becoming wise in the ways of bits and bytes, and motors and metal, but we did not do it so that others could perish at the hands of the incompetent, the arrogant, and the indifferent.
Take your hands off of our minds. Put that money back in your pockets.
Science did fine for thousands of years before the creation of atom weapons, space bombers, and killer drones. It will do fine long after these things have fallen out of fashion, and the militaries of the planet are reduced to police forces, who must pass their grand ideas for killer robots through a neighborhood committe filled with grandmothers and bakers, watched by school kids doing reports for high school civics class.
It has to end.
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.
opini0n 1n other
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
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.
see subject
Totally full of himself. The site isn't even called fark. It is called "Drew Curtis' Fark.com" -- he is full of himself like the old eHarmony hag that keeps putting himself on the commercials.
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.
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
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.
...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?
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