Slashdot Mirror
US Robots Win Big Down Under
An anonymous reader writes "US teams dominated the MAGIC 2010 autonomous robotics competition, mapping and neutralizing simulated bombs at the 250,000 sq. meter Royal Showgrounds in Adelaide, Australia. Leading the pack with a team of fourteen robots was Team Michigan, principally from the University of Michigan, followed by the University of Pennsylvania, and RASR. This contest marks the beginning of practical robots that not only think for themselves, but also actively coordinate with a human commander."
All the Australian robots realised they were in Adelaide and were quite happy to let the place get blown to bits.
Anyone remember the early 80s where there were basic video games, calculators in the department stores, and computers were terribly expensive? You think to yourself,"Maybe someday there will be more computers and video games around." And before that computers were rarer still and more basic. And now we're living in a world where computers are everywhere and are pretty satisfactory. You gotta think maybe in 30 years the world will be populated with decent AI robots of various types. Just like I couldn't conceive of all the types of video games possible in the future then, I can't conceive of all the types of robots possible in the future now. This feeling of,"Anything is possible in the future" brings a warm feeling into my heart. I just hope robots don't become cheap soldiers that any rich guy can own his personal army.
God spoke to me.
Congrats to the teams that did well. I know a bunch of Australian teams that looked into entering and decided not to because:
a) It was an engineering challenge more than a research challenge,
b) It was closer to that ethical line of making killer robots than, say, the DARPA Grand Challenge autonomous vehicle competition,
c) There was an extremely compressed timeline to actually make anything, and
d) The prize is mostly prestige. i.e. It wouldn't come anywhere near the development costs even for the teams that won.
So, it was a less than perfect competition. But that also means that the teams that did well in it did well under difficult conditions, so good for them. :)
They used the Hokuyo UTM-30LX Laser RangeFinder (LIDAR) which has a MSRP of $5,600 and a 30m range (270 degree FOV). I wonder if the Kinect would be a low-cost/low-resolution alternative in some environments (e.g., urban)? And at $150 each, one could use three or four Kinects for a wide field of view.
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
I read the title as US Robotics and thought it had to do with the modem company winning a lawsuit in Australia. I guess I've been reading slashdot too much lately that I always assume somebody is being sued in the stories.
All the taxpayers money seem to be destined to blow things up.
Please see this chart which shows Defense as 23% of taxpayer's money.
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
Interesting idea, however, using a lower resolution sensor leads to a more complicated model. SLAM and other mapping techniques are generally probabilistic based. It depends whether or not they have the processing power and energy to find a viable solution using the Kinect or other visual senors.
There is a large subset of the SLAM community devoted to this, Visual-SLAM; check it out.
Odds that the Kinect will work outdoors should be quite low, as it relies on an array-based infrared system. Alternatively, a laser range finder uses a highly focused pulse of light at (nearly) a single point, which performs better in natural sunlight. It seems quite likely that Kinect will be popular in the near future for indoor robotics and robotics education, but indoor/outdoor robustness is strongly desired these days and scanning LIDARs won't disappear until robust Flash LADAR becomes common
Laser range finders are a must for accurate mapping and localization. I work with the UTM and other LIDARS on my robots, and the maps the produce are extremely accurate. Vision based navigation is possible, but it takes a lot of computation, and a lot of work to account for the uncertainty introduced. I'd say if you have the money, use both. Kinect might work well in a crunch, but as of now vision based SLAM is still in its infancy.
So that's what was fucking going on!
You dick heads, I was doing exams, and all I could hear were planes and all sorts of shit happening in the background.
Nice and considerate!
For those not students of Adelaide University or UniSA, we do exams in the Showgrounds pavilions. No wonder we weren't allowed in the Wayville pavilion which is what we usually use. I did notice and odd amount of military personnel around the exams, I just assumed they were taking cheating seriously... real seriously.
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.