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$2 Million on the Table for DARPA Urban Challenge
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Oct 26, 2007 03:55 PM
from the go-robo-racer-go dept.
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.
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solution (Score:5, Insightful)
We already have that. It's called congress. It's just broken right now.
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(2 Chronicles 15:12-13 NAB)
They entered into a covenant to seek the Lord, the God of their fathers, with all their heart and soul; and everyone who would not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, was to be put to death, whether small or great, whether man or woman.
Besides infidels, the Bible commands us to execute fortune tellers, gays, women who are not virgins on thier wedding night, people who curse at thier pa
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Pity they dont like talking about those parts of the Bible in church.
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Re:solution (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Sure winner (Score:2)
Is a good thing the are working on this (Score:4, Funny)
Traffic Circles (Score:4, Funny)
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Yes, there is a difference. Wikipedia knows.
(Roundabouts are generally smaller, and ALWAYS follow the "yield when entering" system, unlike traffic circles in NJ)
Ahh, retirement... (Score:5, Insightful)
Military implications? Pshaw, I want my car to drive me home when I'm too drunk to drive myself!
-mcgrew
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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 stu
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Somewhat OT: Sally reminds me of the Police song. [oldielyrics.com]
Not so very OT though; it is similar in that it too is "replacement technology". :)
Off the battlefield and out of harm's way (Score:2, Flamebait)
They aren't really soldiers then, are they?
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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
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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.
Agreed. In fact, my first thought when I heard of this: automated supply lines. If (and that is a BIG "if") they can get this to work, AND come up with solid evasive techniques, I could very well see a convoy of these being used to supply troops in the field. It takes a LOT of material to support an army: food, shelter, transport, fuel, parts, etc. Basically, if it wasn't there before, then it had to be transported there. And, if it won't last forever, it will need to be replaced and that means THAT
What about... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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1. A dedicated UAV sent from some other location would make much more sense, launching and retrieving a UAV would be trying to make it a jack of all trades (and thus sacrifice it's ability to do any task well).
2. UAVs can be shot down, communications can be blocked and radio receivers can be damaged. If there is a single easy to exploit point of failure then the whole system is worthless. It needs to be able to move on it's own and everything else is gravy. In others there is no point in
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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.
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Re:What about... (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Parent
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Smoke, clouds, fog, dust, rain, natural radio interference, terrain, tall buildings, underpasses and probably many other things are NORMAL ways to block UAV vision or transmissions. In a war environment you also have ground-to-air missiles, ground-to-ground attacks (that can damage any part of the vehicle), enemy jamming, enemy smoke screens, dust from explos
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Bonus points awarded (Score:1, Troll)
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Who will be held responsible? I admit, already now it is a problem and you will most likely not see any justice as a (family member of a) victim, but at least at the moment, any attack done is a human decision. Also remember t
My roommate is working on this project (Score:2, Funny)
How busy are war zones? (Score:2, Interesting)
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...
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Actually, look up the word "IED" on youtube and watch the videos driving on patrols where IED are used against them (Actually, this one called "I get blown up!" is a home made one of the solders from inside (warning they use a bit of a cursing)) and they are driving around in urban combats usually with other military vehicles stopped around them and other civilian ones
Re:Link no working (Score:2)
Just add a cannon (Score:2)
Laumer, et al (Score:2)
We've got these here (Score:5, Funny)
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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminator_2:_Judgmen (Score:1)
Out of harm's way? WTF? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Bonus points for mentioning the "root causes" of terrorism. Hint: it's called Islam.
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Oh really? You're one deluded dude. I especially like all the pro-CCP-dicatorship propaganda you have set as your home page - it makes you look really independent when you claim that China is ... what exactly, if not a dictatorship? Please tell. Actually, don't bother. Think about it to yourself. I already know the answer, and if you can't bring yourself to admit it, I'm not really interested in hearing how great China is from a ra
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The hardware is much better than last time (Score:5, 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.
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Probably right after there stop being reasons to go to war. Which will happen after people decide to treat each other decently regardless of politics, government or religion.
Of course, you can refuse to fight, you can refuse to participate. I'm sure if you stand up for your beliefs and take responsibility for yourself, people will respect your opinion. Or you could just stay anonymous, nobody's calling you a coward ... oh wait, yeah, we are.
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Of course! I guess I never realized how obvious it is, but now I see that you can't get people to commit atrocities against each other, now I see that the projects designed to utilize technology in new ways are really just evil people, cowards who want to remain anonymous... wait, that does sound familiar.