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$2 Million on the Table for DARPA Urban Challenge

Posted by Zonk on from the go-robo-racer-go dept.

coondoggie writes "The contestants: Thirty-five driverless vehicles. The goal: to navigate an intricate faux-urban environment quickly. The prize: $2 million for the fastest qualifying vehicle. 'The National Qualification Event will take place this weekend ... DARPA says its third-annual Urban Challenge program has the lofty goal of developing technology that will keep soldiers off the battlefield and out of harm's way. The Urban Challenge features autonomous ground vehicles maneuvering in a mock city environment, executing simulated military supply missions while merging into moving traffic, navigating traffic circles, negotiating busy intersections, and avoiding obstacles.'" I'll be cheering, as long as the creepy robot bear isn't participating.

16 of 88 comments (clear)

  1. solution by User+956 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    DARPA says its third-annual Urban Challenge program has the lofty goal of developing technology that will keep soldiers off the battlefield and out of harm's way.

    We already have that. It's called congress. It's just broken right now.

    --
    The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
    1. Re:solution by Original+Replica · · Score: 3, Informative

      Most people these days don't understand the difference between Pedophilia and Ephebophila. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephebophilia One is unnatural (doesn't make sense biologically), the other is simply culturally unacceptable. Back in the days when the average life expectancy was 40 years old, it made a lot of sense to marry a 14 year old. These days it makes more sense to have young teens continue their education and social development, consequentially our cultural perceptions of what is acceptable have changed.

      --
      We are all just people.
  2. Is a good thing the are working on this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Because the wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And their duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots.

  3. Traffic Circles by Erioll · · Score: 3, Funny

    Screw cars that will parallel park themselves, if they can make cars that navigate those abominations that are Traffic Circles, I'd buy THAT!

    1. Re:Traffic Circles by MyLongNickName · · Score: 2, Funny

      Traffic circles are simple. You just can wait for an engraved invitation to enter the circle. Usually I get caught behind one of these folks and watch with amazement as they pass up opportunity after opportunity.

      --
      See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
  4. Ahh, retirement... by sm62704 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    God but I love technology! The old WWII vets are all worried about losing their mobility when the state determnes they're no longer fit to drive. By the time I'm that old (and I have gray hair and a white beard already) I'll have Sally.

    Military implications? Pshaw, I want my car to drive me home when I'm too drunk to drive myself!

    -mcgrew

    --
    mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
    1. Re:Ahh, retirement... by hackstraw · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Pshaw, I want my car to drive me home when I'm too drunk to drive myself!

      Think of all of the social changes that self driving cars would bring.

      No more police checkpoints. Kids with as much freedom as drunks, old people, and "normal" adults. No speeding tickets. Car chases in the movies will have to be set in the past, and eventually will look like westerns do today. Registration, insurance, and all that is the responsibility of the _driver_ today. Terrorists will no longer have to hijack trucks and stuff.

      Come to think of it, I would guess by then, going to work would require taking off your shoes, going though a metal detector, and all that prior to take off.

  5. What about... by Lifyre · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Caveat I haven't had a chance to read the entire challenge to see if it answers this question. I'm in Iraq I have better things to do, sort of...

    Does the vehicle have to be one piece? Specifically can it launch a UAV to provide a top down view of the street? This could be then used to avoid crowds (or head towards them), get around dead ends, and generally navigate the cities. The imagery we have is often horribly out of date and roads have moved, stopped existing, or new ones have popped up.

    I think having an eye in the sky dedicated to the vehicle could be a tremendous asset.

    --
    I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
    1. Re:What about... by TinheadNed · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I haven't checked the rules, but unless something's massively changed from last time, there's no reason to launch a UAV because for a start that would be massively more complicated and more expensive than required, and secondly DARPA are still providing GPS waypoints.

      But I wouldn't have thought they'd want another UAV, there are other competitions for that. Navigating round the traffic is the tricky part. And recognising all the signs and speed limits and stuff.

    2. Re:What about... by David_Shultz · · Score: 3, Informative

      Does the vehicle have to be one piece? Specifically can it launch a UAV to provide a top down view of the street? This could be then used to avoid crowds (or head towards them), get around dead ends, and generally navigate the cities. The imagery we have is often horribly out of date and roads have moved, stopped existing, or new ones have popped up.

      Yes. All of the equipment has to be on the vehicle. As far as communication goes: GPS is allowed, and a remote kill switch is allowed (required, actually). Other than that, everything is on board. Typical fare is regular cameras (which have good distance vision, but require some smart computer vision algorithms) combined with laser range finders. The winner of the last DARPA challenge was a robot named Stanley (from Stanford) who mapped laser range finding data onto the video images, thus identifying the safe path in the image to travel through.

  6. My roommate is working on this project by jameseyjamesey · · Score: 2, Funny

    He's seriously been working for 18 hours a day for the last 3 weeks. He looks cracked out, but he's just DARPAed

  7. How busy are war zones? by markowen58 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    aside from the fact any stop signs and road markings may now be a crater. Do many soldiers get stuck in traffic in the middle of a war zone?

    Surely a better idea would be to train these vehicles to drive evasively once ambushed to stop supplies from not reaching the front line?

    I for one never saw a traffic report from baghdad during the war...

  8. Re:Off the battlefield and out of harm's way by Speefnarkle1982 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I don't think this sort of technology will replace soldiers right out. However, it can be
    a great help in certain situations where you don't want to risk soldiers lives. EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) currently use robots to take out mines, IED's etc. These are different in the sense that they are remote controlled by well trained individuals.
    I see being able to negotiate urban obstacles in overly hostile environments to be a huge advantage especially if they are entirely autonomous. You can then send in robotic vehicles into riskier situations without the concern for loss of human life.

    However, the ability to plan and conduct such operations and being able to assess a real combat situation
    is well beyond current technology. Then you have the whole realm of tactics and strategy, better strategy can allow for huge gains in the battle field, but would we want to leave that to robots? Over-reliance on technology to do humans jobs is a bad thing, and this is definitely a good example of that. I really don't see us ever eliminating the need for "boots on the ground", only maybe enhancing their abilities on the battlefield.

  9. We've got these here by PPH · · Score: 4, Funny
    In my town we have quire a few vehicles, mainly large Cadillacs, that cruise the streets with no apparent driver. They still have some bugs to work out, as they don't always stop for signals or pedestrians. And they definitely don't move very quickly.

    Upon closer inspection, one can see a little grey head not quite level with the dashboard. But I don't think these occupants have any connection to the vehicles' control.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  10. Out of harm's way? WTF? by vandan · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Developing robots for urban warfare isn't exactly going to decrease civilian deaths or injuries. It's going to increase them. The only thing it will decrease is the reports of dead US soliders. A great example of the twisted focus on 'our' deaths came recently here in Australia. The 2nd Australian solider was killed in Afghanistan. Absolutely everyone on the mainstream media and 2-party political system is falling over themselves to declare our fallen solider a hero. But no-one ever talks about the thousands of hero is Afghanistan, such as men, women and children who 'soldier on' after having their loved ones killed and injured, and classified as 'collateral damage'. These are the real heroes - the innocent civilians who face incredible hardship precisely because of our military and economic meddling in their country. Instead of developing better killing systems, we should develop a more just society. To all those drones protest that we need to fight terrorism - get a grip - we're creating the terrorism. Remove the cause, and the symptom will disintegrate.

  11. The hardware is much better than last time by Animats · · Score: 4, Interesting

    One of the major side effects of the DARPA Grand Challenge series is that the supporting hardware has become much better. You can now buy most of the major components off the shelf. GPS/INS/compass/odometer navigation units are a few thousand dollars, rugged, and work well. When the first Grand Challenge was announced, the off-the-shelf solution cost about $170K and required 4U of rackmount space, with air conditioning. CMU actually used that in the first round.

    LIDAR units have improved enormously in the last two years. Last time around, everybody just had single-beam line scanner LIDARs, usually from SICK, except for Team DAD, who built a multibeam scanner that worked but wasn't rugged enough. This time, the major players have multibeam LIDAR units from Velodyne or Ibeo. Velodyne's unit has 64 lasers on a spinning drum. Now you can image your entire environment in 3D at 5Hz.

    Controlling the vehicle is easier, too. There are now cars available with electrical power steering and brakes, and one can tap into those systems to drive. And there are at least three vendors selling gear for remote/autonomous driving of existing cars.

    So now it's almost entirely a software problem. You don't burn so much time and effort building sensor and actuator systems.