For those interested, this is the memory used to store the flight software images on the rover, so you can get an idea of the size/density compared to commercial products:
http://www.3d-plus.com/product.php?type=1&fm=19
That may be color, but it is the wrong rover!
For those wondering why they don't take color photos...they do, but they take much longer to downlink. They are transmitting small thumbnails first, then full size B&W images, then they will do the full res color photos and videos, over the coming days/weeks/months. This way they can get initial images to check for any damage, etc as quickly as possible.
I'm sure you've seen the press coverage concerning my supposed comments on the space shuttle and International Space Station, beginning last Wednesday. I've been in Russia since the day the article came out, and have therefore missed most of the reaction to it, but I've received enough e-mail to realize that I didn't handle the situation well and have left some hurt feelings behind. So, I thought I should make the effort to clarify the situation, and this e-mail to all of you is the best way I know to do it.
The attention-getting parts of the story were, of course, associated with the use of words such as "mistake" and "blunder" in connection with the shuttle and station programs. The press coverage has been such as to make it appear that I used those words to characterize the programs. In fact -- and I would hope that this goes without saying -- I did no such thing. I was asked by an interviewer if shuttle had been "a mistake," and I provided my answer, which addressed the difficulty of the design challenge and the paucity of funds with which it was undertaken. This answer was given in the article, and was quoted correctly. But the use of words such as "mistake" and "blunder," as well as the overall pejorative tone of the article, was not reflective of my remarks nor of the general context of the discussion.
At the strategic level, I think all of you know that I believe we have been restricted to low Earth orbit for far too long and that the proper focus of our nation's space program should be the exploration of our solar system. I do understand that others will disagree. In that context, it is useful to recall Norm Augustine's observation that most people believe we should have a robust space program; it is just that no two people agree as to what that program should be! But it is my sense that this debate has been had and has been resolved for the time being. The Vision for Space Exploration is the right path, and it is the path that we are re-engaging our agency to follow. I am committed to it.
With that said, I do hope you know that I would never speak of our efforts, past or present, in a way that would be intended to denigrate the efforts of the engineers, technicians, managers, scientists, and administrative personnel who "make it happen" at NASA and at our contractors.
As I have often said publicly, the shuttle is the most amazing machine humans have ever built, and it has been the recipient of the most brilliant engineering that America can provide. The station is a more difficult engineering project, by far, than was Apollo. It is true that we have not met our original goals for these programs, for myriad reasons dating back 35 years or more, involving strategic and budgetary decisions made, properly or otherwise, above NASA. Although this is not the fault of the dedicated people, past and present, who have worked in these programs, I think we all know that we can do better, and that we will. But even if everything were in our favor -- and it is not -- it would be several years before we could have available a successor to the shuttle. In the interim, we must complete the station and the only tool with which we can accomplish that is the shuttle. At this point, an expeditious but orderly phase-out of the shuttle program, using it to complete the assembly of the station while we develop a new system, is the best thing we can do for our agency and for the nation.
These are the messages I have tried to convey. It is not my intention that they should be used to criticize or diminish the efforts of those who have devoted their lives -- and in some cases given their lives -- to the space program. Space technology is still in its infancy. To criticize the shuttle and station because our best efforts have fallen short of the goals we have set would be like criticizing the early aviation pioneers because they did not understand, then, how to build transcontinental aircraft. In this business, our goal is to push the frontiers of technology, to learn what we can by doing so, and then move on. And that is what we will do.
Thought people might find this interesting. We received the following email today:
Message from the Administrator
I'm sure you've seen the press coverage concerning my supposed comments on the space shuttle and International Space Station, beginning last Wednesday.
I've been in Russia since the day the article came out, and have therefore missed most of the reaction to it, but I've received enough e-mail to realize that I didn't handle the situation well and have left some hurt feelings behind. So, I thought I should make the effort to clarify the situation, and this e-mail to all of you is the best way I know to do it.
The attention-getting parts of the story were, of course, associated with the use of words such as "mistake" and "blunder" in connection with the shuttle and station programs. The press coverage has been such as to make it appear that I used those words to characterize the programs. In fact -- and I would hope that this goes without saying -- I did no such thing. I was asked by an interviewer if shuttle had been "a mistake," and I provided my answer, which addressed the difficulty of the design challenge and the paucity of funds with which it was undertaken. This answer was given in the article, and was quoted correctly. But the use of words such as "mistake"
and "blunder," as well as the overall pejorative tone of the article, was not reflective of my remarks nor of the general context of the discussion.
At the strategic level, I think all of you know that I believe we have been restricted to low Earth orbit for far too long and that the proper focus of our nation's space program should be the exploration of our solar system. I do understand that others will disagree. In that context, it is useful to recall Norm Augustine's observation that most people believe we should have a robust space program; it is just that no two people agree as to what that program should be! But it is my sense that this debate has been had and has been resolved for the time being. The Vision for Space Exploration is the right path, and it is the path that we are re-engaging our agency to follow.
I am committed to it.
With that said, I do hope you know that I would never speak of our efforts, past or present, in a way that would be intended to denigrate the efforts of the engineers, technicians, managers, scientists, and administrative personnel who "make it happen" at NASA and at our contractors.
As I have often said publicly, the shuttle is the most amazing machine humans have ever built, and it has been the recipient of the most brilliant engineering that America can provide. The station is a more difficult engineering project, by far, than was Apollo. It is true that we have not met our original goals for these programs, for myriad reasons dating back 35 years or more, involving strategic and budgetary decisions made, properly or otherwise, above NASA. Although this is not the fault of the dedicated people, past and present, who have worked in these programs, I think we all know that we can do better, and that we will. But even if everything were in our favor -- and it is not -- it would be several years before we could have available a successor to the shuttle. In the interim, we must complete the station and the only tool with which we can accomplish that is the shuttle. At this point, an expeditious but orderly phase-out of the shuttle program, using it to complete the assembly of the station while we develop a new system, is the best thing we can do for our agency and for the nation.
These are the messages I have tried to convey. It is not my intention that they should be used to criticize or diminish the efforts of those who have devoted their lives -- and in some cases given their lives -- to the space program. Space technology is still in its infancy. To criticize the shuttle and station because our best efforts have fallen short of the goals we have set would be like criticizing the early aviation pioneers because they did not understand, then, how to build transcontinental aircraft. In this business, our goal is to push the frontiers of technology, to learn what we can by doing so, and then move on. And that is what we will do.
Thank you all for your time and attention.
Michael Griffin
NASA Administrator
It would be ideal, however one of the rules for the challenge is that no government funds may be used towards development. You can of course uses technology that was developed with government funding, but ONLY if it is commercially available. Unfortunately, the JPL vision code is not.
This one really stands out in my mind. I worked for a couple years at a fabless semiconductor company. One of my coworkers, who happened to be the manager of quality assurance, managed to tapeout the wrong chip one time. He sent the fab the same chip we had just taped out a month or two before. Needless to say, he was fired soon after.
This is the same guy who would routinely check in about a gigabyte of PDF documentation, that he downloaded from another company website, into our version control system.
First off, congratulations to all involved on this achievement. They barely beat the research group I am a part of at Caltech, which is working on the same sort of thing. Our chip is in fab right now, returning in a month or so.
Information on the Caltech research can be found here.
Hmmm...I wonder though if most of the traffic on the Internet-2 will be from students downloading music and movies from other students with p2p software?
How would you keep the teams on future days from learning what the exact course is? The course waypoints are released just hours before the race starts. They could have different courses for each day, but that would probably take significant extra effort. Teams would also be able to analyze the results of previous runs by other teams, and perhaps find weaknesses in their plan that they could fix in time.
All in all this is not bad for DARPA, but it is unfair to the teams that go first. Even if they do pick different courses for different days, they would need to guarantee they are of equal difficulty to make it fair. What if it rains during one of the races, but not the others? Can you guarantee equal weather conditions?
I would tend to agree that this is an unfortunate turn of events, however, and it would be nice if a workaround could be found...
You make some valid points. As I said, there are answers to some of these.
One thing I would like to comment on, regarding the fence...Of course, you look for fence posts...but what if there is an opening somewhere in the fence, and part of the race course is to go through that opening? You slow down too much if you creep along right next to the fence, and if you are too far away you won't be able to distinguish an opening. Also, given the vibrations in the vehicle, it can be difficult for any camera, regardless what you are doing with it, to focus on an area to the point that you could tell there is a fence there. The solution may simply be to drive as close as possible to the fence so you can find the opening.
Also, regarding GPS, yeah it is pretty much useless for most of this type of stuff.
Yes and no. As you say, you need to get the AI information about each object and what it is. I'm working on the Caltech team, and that is where the majority of time is being spent on the software side - detecting and classifying objects. It is an extremely difficult task given todays technology, a limited budget, and the variety of obstacles you can find. Some examples:
How do you determine if there is an object, or it is just mud on the camera?
How do you detect dust and filter that out?
How do you detect a fence - the links are generally too small to be picked up on the camera until you are very close.
How do you detect water?
The list goes on and on...Some of these have answers, some do not. Many times you can use a variety of sensors - visual, ladar, inertial, gps, etc and at least one of them will be giving accurate information. But how do you deal with inconsistent information? GPS says you are in the middle of a river because it is off by a few meters, but the visual says you are not.
I would say that once you have that information, however, the problem becomes relatively straight forward.
I've programmed extensively in C and Java, with some C++. I took a typical anti-Microsoft stance early on and refused to even look at C#. I was finally convinced to try it, and I must say that it has some nice features.
I recommend that any programmers out there try using it before discounting it. It might be especially interesting for those C++ programmers out there who don't like Java for one reason or another.
Slashdot Mirror
For those interested, this is the memory used to store the flight software images on the rover, so you can get an idea of the size/density compared to commercial products: http://www.3d-plus.com/product.php?type=1&fm=19
They have already downloaded a number of color photos you can find online, including a color panorama. http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/
That may be color, but it is the wrong rover! For those wondering why they don't take color photos...they do, but they take much longer to downlink. They are transmitting small thumbnails first, then full size B&W images, then they will do the full res color photos and videos, over the coming days/weeks/months. This way they can get initial images to check for any damage, etc as quickly as possible.
Message from the Administrator
I'm sure you've seen the press coverage concerning my supposed comments on the space shuttle and International Space Station, beginning last Wednesday.
I've been in Russia since the day the article came out, and have therefore missed most of the reaction to it, but I've received enough e-mail to realize that I didn't handle the situation well and have left some hurt feelings behind. So, I thought I should make the effort to clarify the situation, and this e-mail to all of you is the best way I know to do it.
The attention-getting parts of the story were, of course, associated with the use of words such as "mistake" and "blunder" in connection with the shuttle and station programs. The press coverage has been such as to make it appear that I used those words to characterize the programs. In fact -- and I would hope that this goes without saying -- I did no such thing. I was asked by an interviewer if shuttle had been "a mistake," and I provided my answer, which addressed the difficulty of the design challenge and the paucity of funds with which it was undertaken. This answer was given in the article, and was quoted correctly. But the use of words such as "mistake"
and "blunder," as well as the overall pejorative tone of the article, was not reflective of my remarks nor of the general context of the discussion.
At the strategic level, I think all of you know that I believe we have been restricted to low Earth orbit for far too long and that the proper focus of our nation's space program should be the exploration of our solar system. I do understand that others will disagree. In that context, it is useful to recall Norm Augustine's observation that most people believe we should have a robust space program; it is just that no two people agree as to what that program should be! But it is my sense that this debate has been had and has been resolved for the time being. The Vision for Space Exploration is the right path, and it is the path that we are re-engaging our agency to follow.
I am committed to it.
With that said, I do hope you know that I would never speak of our efforts, past or present, in a way that would be intended to denigrate the efforts of the engineers, technicians, managers, scientists, and administrative personnel who "make it happen" at NASA and at our contractors.
As I have often said publicly, the shuttle is the most amazing machine humans have ever built, and it has been the recipient of the most brilliant engineering that America can provide. The station is a more difficult engineering project, by far, than was Apollo. It is true that we have not met our original goals for these programs, for myriad reasons dating back 35 years or more, involving strategic and budgetary decisions made, properly or otherwise, above NASA. Although this is not the fault of the dedicated people, past and present, who have worked in these programs, I think we all know that we can do better, and that we will. But even if everything were in our favor -- and it is not -- it would be several years before we could have available a successor to the shuttle. In the interim, we must complete the station and the only tool with which we can accomplish that is the shuttle. At this point, an expeditious but orderly phase-out of the shuttle program, using it to complete the assembly of the station while we develop a new system, is the best thing we can do for our agency and for the nation.
These are the messages I have tried to convey. It is not my intention that they should be used to criticize or diminish the efforts of those who have devoted their lives -- and in some cases given their lives -- to the space program. Space technology is still in its infancy. To criticize the shuttle and station because our best efforts have fallen short of the goals we have set would be like criticizing the early aviation pioneers because they did not understand, then, how to build transcontinental aircraft. In this business, our goal is to push the frontiers of technology, to learn what we can by doing so, and then move on. And that is what we will do.
Thank you all for your time and attention.
Michael Griffin
NASA Administrator
Thought people might find this interesting. We received the following email today: Message from the Administrator I'm sure you've seen the press coverage concerning my supposed comments on the space shuttle and International Space Station, beginning last Wednesday. I've been in Russia since the day the article came out, and have therefore missed most of the reaction to it, but I've received enough e-mail to realize that I didn't handle the situation well and have left some hurt feelings behind. So, I thought I should make the effort to clarify the situation, and this e-mail to all of you is the best way I know to do it. The attention-getting parts of the story were, of course, associated with the use of words such as "mistake" and "blunder" in connection with the shuttle and station programs. The press coverage has been such as to make it appear that I used those words to characterize the programs. In fact -- and I would hope that this goes without saying -- I did no such thing. I was asked by an interviewer if shuttle had been "a mistake," and I provided my answer, which addressed the difficulty of the design challenge and the paucity of funds with which it was undertaken. This answer was given in the article, and was quoted correctly. But the use of words such as "mistake" and "blunder," as well as the overall pejorative tone of the article, was not reflective of my remarks nor of the general context of the discussion. At the strategic level, I think all of you know that I believe we have been restricted to low Earth orbit for far too long and that the proper focus of our nation's space program should be the exploration of our solar system. I do understand that others will disagree. In that context, it is useful to recall Norm Augustine's observation that most people believe we should have a robust space program; it is just that no two people agree as to what that program should be! But it is my sense that this debate has been had and has been resolved for the time being. The Vision for Space Exploration is the right path, and it is the path that we are re-engaging our agency to follow. I am committed to it. With that said, I do hope you know that I would never speak of our efforts, past or present, in a way that would be intended to denigrate the efforts of the engineers, technicians, managers, scientists, and administrative personnel who "make it happen" at NASA and at our contractors. As I have often said publicly, the shuttle is the most amazing machine humans have ever built, and it has been the recipient of the most brilliant engineering that America can provide. The station is a more difficult engineering project, by far, than was Apollo. It is true that we have not met our original goals for these programs, for myriad reasons dating back 35 years or more, involving strategic and budgetary decisions made, properly or otherwise, above NASA. Although this is not the fault of the dedicated people, past and present, who have worked in these programs, I think we all know that we can do better, and that we will. But even if everything were in our favor -- and it is not -- it would be several years before we could have available a successor to the shuttle. In the interim, we must complete the station and the only tool with which we can accomplish that is the shuttle. At this point, an expeditious but orderly phase-out of the shuttle program, using it to complete the assembly of the station while we develop a new system, is the best thing we can do for our agency and for the nation. These are the messages I have tried to convey. It is not my intention that they should be used to criticize or diminish the efforts of those who have devoted their lives -- and in some cases given their lives -- to the space program. Space technology is still in its infancy. To criticize the shuttle and station because our best efforts have fallen short of the goals we have set would be like criticizing the early aviation pioneers because they did not understand, then, how to build transcontinental aircraft. In this business, our goal is to push the frontiers of technology, to learn what we can by doing so, and then move on. And that is what we will do. Thank you all for your time and attention. Michael Griffin NASA Administrator
I'm on the Caltech team, and I can assure you, we are not using the JPL code, although we wish we could.
It would be ideal, however one of the rules for the challenge is that no government funds may be used towards development. You can of course uses technology that was developed with government funding, but ONLY if it is commercially available. Unfortunately, the JPL vision code is not.
This is the same guy who would routinely check in about a gigabyte of PDF documentation, that he downloaded from another company website, into our version control system.
Information on the Caltech research can be found here.
Hmmm...I wonder though if most of the traffic on the Internet-2 will be from students downloading music and movies from other students with p2p software?
All in all this is not bad for DARPA, but it is unfair to the teams that go first. Even if they do pick different courses for different days, they would need to guarantee they are of equal difficulty to make it fair. What if it rains during one of the races, but not the others? Can you guarantee equal weather conditions?
I would tend to agree that this is an unfortunate turn of events, however, and it would be nice if a workaround could be found...
One thing I would like to comment on, regarding the fence...Of course, you look for fence posts...but what if there is an opening somewhere in the fence, and part of the race course is to go through that opening? You slow down too much if you creep along right next to the fence, and if you are too far away you won't be able to distinguish an opening. Also, given the vibrations in the vehicle, it can be difficult for any camera, regardless what you are doing with it, to focus on an area to the point that you could tell there is a fence there. The solution may simply be to drive as close as possible to the fence so you can find the opening.
Also, regarding GPS, yeah it is pretty much useless for most of this type of stuff.
Don't know about minimum size for the car.
How do you determine if there is an object, or it is just mud on the camera?
How do you detect dust and filter that out?
How do you detect a fence - the links are generally too small to be picked up on the camera until you are very close.
How do you detect water?
The list goes on and on...Some of these have answers, some do not. Many times you can use a variety of sensors - visual, ladar, inertial, gps, etc and at least one of them will be giving accurate information. But how do you deal with inconsistent information? GPS says you are in the middle of a river because it is off by a few meters, but the visual says you are not.
I would say that once you have that information, however, the problem becomes relatively straight forward.
One word: porn.
I recommend that any programmers out there try using it before discounting it. It might be especially interesting for those C++ programmers out there who don't like Java for one reason or another.