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Eleven Finalists in Pentagon's Robotic Rally

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the you-must-be-this-safe-to-ride dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A mere 11 driverless vehicles — not the 20 originally planned — will compete in this weekend's $3.5 million all-robot street rally, hosted by the Pentagon. After a series of crashes, dangerous turns, and aimless wanderings off of the course, the rest of the robo-cars in the "Urban Challenge" were deemed unsafe to compete."

19 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. Drivers' tests and Pentagon competitions by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 5, Funny

    It seems totally out of whack that they'd disqualify entries that wandered all over the track, went the wrong direction down roads, crashed into multiple objects, and generally were a menace on the road.

    After all, they still let women drive.

    1. Re:Drivers' tests and Pentagon competitions by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 4, Funny

      Best thing about teenage girls, though: I get older, they stay the same age.

    2. Re:Drivers' tests and Pentagon competitions by ciaohound · · Score: 4, Interesting

      No, what's out of whack about that is that such behavior, at least the menacing parts, are essential for survival for driving in Iraq. A friend of mine told me how his son, who serves in the army, was given a week of "reprogramming" upon returning to the States before being allowed to drive here. You know, for things like NOT driving ninety miles an hour, OBSERVING stop signs, YIELDING the right of way, RESPECTING pedestrians, etc, etc, etc.

      --
      Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
    3. Re:Drivers' tests and Pentagon competitions by arivanov · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It is either that or die.

      One of my uncles was a contractor in Angola during the civil war and he nearly went to jail for dangerous driving after coming back.

      Apparently many anti-tank mines have a delayed fuse so that they blow up under the middle of the tank. If you drive at 70mph+ it blows up behind you. After 3 years of working down there he was having a panic attack every time his speed dropped under 50.

      Frankly if they can get away with reprogramming without having to undergo therapy they are very lucky.

      --
      Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
      http://www.sigsegv.cx/
    4. Re:Drivers' tests and Pentagon competitions by Skrynesaver · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Curiously enough insurance statistics tend to indicate that women have the same number of accidents as men, however because the haven't got their egos wrapped around their driving ability they tend not to be doing 30 over the applicable limit at the time and so cause less damage

      --
      "Linux is for noobs"-The new MS fud strategy
    5. Re:Drivers' tests and Pentagon competitions by Intron · · Score: 2, Funny

      "It seems totally out of whack that they'd disqualify entries that wandered all over the track, went the wrong direction down roads, crashed into multiple objects, and generally were a menace on the road."

      True. They could have just moved the competition to downtown Boston.

      --
      Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
  2. Next challenge by WPIDalamar · · Score: 4, Funny

    "It would be terrible for one bot to take out another"

    So when is that event scheduled, and will it be on pay per view?

  3. GPS + Humans are not better by elh_inny · · Score: 4, Funny

    I agree that they were too restrictive.

    Seeing the vidoes on YouTube like these:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh-B3rysxIA
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7La09EBLf-Q

    or stories about people driving into lakes and flooded roads "because GPS told them to"

    man who went to the back of his RV while still on the highway to have some coffee, when he crashed, he sued the company for not stating in the manual that "the car does not turn by itself"

    truck driver who drove his lorry into a river, not knowing that the bridge he intended to use was no longer there

    etc

    I'd say pass the control to the machines as soon as possible....

    1. Re:GPS + Humans are not better by Silver+Sloth · · Score: 2, Informative

      man who went to the back of his RV while still on the highway to have some coffee, when he crashed, he sued the company for not stating in the manual that "the car does not turn by itself" Er... no. Check your Urban legends first
      --
      init 11 - for when you need that edge.
  4. I miss read that to be "Elvin Finalists"... by An+anonymous+reader · · Score: 2, Funny

    I was thinking, "Cool! This is as close as we are going to get to: Ninjas vs. Robots." I need more coffee. ;-)

  5. And then I saw this by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 2, Funny

    Words cannot describe...

  6. Counterintuitive by hyades1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I guess it makes sense if you think about it, but it seems a bit weird that it's much easier to design and build a plane that flies itself than a car that drives itself.

    --
    I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
  7. Good enough for government work! by Rob+T+Firefly · · Score: 2, Funny

    After a series of crashes, dangerous turns, and aimless wanderings off of the course I don't understand why the Pentagon didn't hire those robots on the spot.
    --
    Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
  8. Re:Well, the tech is not there yet by BobbyJesus · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You're exactly right. The race organizers shouldn't have specified detailed rules that teams could count on for development because the overall goal here is to have a completely autonomous vehicle. There's no chance that DARPA is doing this to prove that the technology can actually work first, then make it more robust in order to implement it. What they're probably going to do is take the winning car and ship it over to Iraq and have it start driving around cities right after the contest is over. That's definitely their plan, I read about it on a website somewhere. Definitely. OR... you're an idiot. They used the Grand Challenge (driving autonomously without worrying about man-made hazards) as the first stepping stone. Then they use the Urban Challenge (driving autonomously with some pre-defined, but not completely real hazards) to advance the technology another step. Then maybe in another year or two they have an even bigger project. Or maybe they take the technology as it is and continue to develop it in-house until it can drive through tunnels and not run through a railroad crossing gate.

  9. Friend of mine is competing in this... by ALecs · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ...actually - his car is the one that got "clotheslined" in the link from the summary.

    --- BEGIN 644 conspiracytheory.txt ---
    Anyway - I heard Wed. that they were out of the competition - more-or-less arbitrarily. It sounds to me like DARPA already knew, going in to this, who they wanted the finalists to be. Stanford (the previous winner), CMU, Oshkosh - they're all there.

    Last time DARPA basically did the same thing to Team Jefferson. They just said "you guys are done" when they showed up to re-try a test -- after they'd spent 30+ hours doing energency repairs after hitting a barrier. I'm getting the distinct impression they don't want anybody small in this thing. TJ has spent a fraction of the other teams' development costs and for some reason that scares DARPA.

  10. 55% Were safe to drive by illectro · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That's better odds than the people they're giving licenses to in this country.

  11. Quit whining. by Animats · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As the head of a team that lost in 2005, I don't think so. The 2005 competition was run fairly. The Marine colonel who ran the thing was tough, but fair. The only extra consideration I saw given to a team was that CMU got to have a Discovery Channel camera crew in the starting gate area, which, under the rules, was limited to two people per team.

    In the Urban Challenge, if you hit a stationary object, you weren't ready to compete at that level. Back in 2004, 'bots were hitting stationary obstacles all over the place. Some went off road and rolled over. Oshkosh Truck/OSU not only hit a parked SUV, it pushed it for a while until someone hit the remote emergency stop. (That's why Oshkosh Truck dumped OSU, pulled the project in-house, and finished in 2005, using their huge truck.) CMU hit a fence placed by DARPA just before the event. CMU's vehicle, in 2004, wasn't really autonomous, just preprogrammed. They had a trailer full of people manually planning the route in the two hours before the event, using data obtained via overflights of the area with LIDAR-equipped aircraft. The 2004 Grand Challenge was embarrassing for everyone involved, including DARPA. The press reports made it look like a joke.

    In 2005, everybody who made it to Fontana had something better than anybody had in 2004. There were very few collisions. It was striking, being at the raceway in Fontana, and seeing 43 large, autonomous vehicles, all of which basically worked. There'd been enormous progress in a year and a half. Mobile robotics wasn't a joke any more. We were out of the Comedy Channel/Robot Wars era, and into the ESPN/NASCAR era. With NASCAR-sized budgets for some teams, but not all. Some small teams were successful. Although "small", in this game, means mid six figures to low seven figures.

    This year, DARPA insists you not hit anything. Urban Challenge vehicles have to drive in traffic. There are cars with human drivers on the course. Complaining about being eliminated after a collision with a stationary barrier is just whining.

    1. Re:Quit whining. by SwordsmanLuke · · Score: 4, Informative

      A number of teams were eliminated this year without hitting anything. Yup. I work for a small company which was competing in the Urban Challenge. We haven't hit anything (or even come close to hitting anything), but we got cut yesterday as well. It took us by surprise. We understand that collisions are a Bad Thing, but if our vehicle is just a tad more cautious than the other vehicles - why is that bad enough to warrant elimination?

      For the record though, I doubt if the eliminations were rigged. True, only a few small companies made it to the finals, but I think that has more to do with small companies also having small budgets and not being able to afford the same level of investment as larger firms. Also, a number of Track A teams (which DARPA has already made a not-insignificant investment in) were cut, my company included.
      --
      Any plan which depends on a fundamental change in human behavior is doomed from the start.
  12. Kind of like an Emergency Vehicle? by mlund · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yeah, I hate it when those damn Ambulances, Fire Engines, and Police Cruisers just tear through the neighborhood with their sirens blaring and those damn lights flashing. Where do they get off driving ninety miles an hour, ignoring stop signs, refusing to yield the right of way, and cutting off pedestrian traffic?

    How dare they! I mean, it isn't like anyone's life is on the line, right?