Eleven Finalists in Pentagon's Robotic Rally

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."

Comments

Drivers' tests and Pentagon competitions

[BadAnalogyGuy]

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.

Re:Drivers' tests and Pentagon competitions

[BadAnalogyGuy]

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

Re:Drivers' tests and Pentagon competitions

[ciaohound]

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.

Re:Drivers' tests and Pentagon competitions

[Skrynesaver]

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

Next challenge

[WPIDalamar]

"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?

GPS + Humans are not better

[elh_inny]

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....

Quit whining.

[Animats]

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.

Re:Quit whining.

[SwordsmanLuke]

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.