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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?
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...
Science did fine for thousands of years before the creation of atom weapons, space bombers, and killer drones.
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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."
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.
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
In the 2005 Darpa Grand Challenge "Stanley", Stanford University's entry, a Volkswagen Touareg wagon, won, beating several other entrants that completed the course. The team was led by Sebastian Thune; Stanley was remarkable for having a relatively simple LIDAR/GPS sensor array, unlike many of the other entries, but had extremely sophisticated software and machine learning and high autonomy, whereas it's main competition, CMUs "H1ander", had extremely involved sensing and was programmed with an extremely detailed course route, but its complex directional LIDAR array failed early in the race, and though it could compensate, it completed the course slow.
Find the NOVA episode if you can, truly fascinating. I hate how NOVA ScienceNow is so attention-span limited.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Here's the NOVA. And it's "Thrun", not Thune.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
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
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.
I remember when the California governor was in a movie where he was a robot driving around town. I think this means we'll be alright.
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