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Announcements United States Technology

DARPA Grand Challenge Kicks Off March 13th 137

Posted by timothy from the for-great-justice dept.
GillBates0 writes "A quick reminder that the DARPA Grand Challenge is due to kick off March 13, the coming Saturday." He points to this "quick recap of the teams participating in the event," as well as details about the available satellite feeds. "The Atlanta-Journal Constitution is running a story about the event today. Quoting Frank Dellaert, co-director of Georgia Tech's robotics lab from the article, 'I would have trouble driving some of these roads myself. I think it's beyond the capabilities of autonomous vehicles today.' (shameless school plug). We'll see if the participants can prove him wrong." Iphtashu Fitz adds a link to the New York Times' coverage of the trans-Mojave race, whose participants include "among other things a seriously tricked out motorcycle. The race is being run by the Pentagon, who is offering a $1 million prize to the builders of the first robot to successfully navigate a 200 mile route across the desert. ... a blog on ScienceBlog about the race has just started as well."
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DARPA Grand Challenge Kicks Off March 13th More

DARPA Grand Challenge Kicks Off March 13th

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  • so you telling me .... $$$ (Score:4, Funny)

    by Quadfreak0 ( 624555 ) on Monday March 08, 2004 @11:00PM (#8506347)
    So anyone planning on hi-jackin... uh I mean borrowing some equipment thats just rolling around the desert? Nobody is physically standing there watching right?

  • Researchers are wrong (Score:5, Funny)

    by tyrani ( 166937 ) on Monday March 08, 2004 @11:00PM (#8506350)
    They're looking in the wrong place. I see a half dozen idiots drive "autonomously" to work everyday while eating, reading the frickin news paper, shaving, applying make-up, etc.

    Researchers should be looking to these people for the artificial intelligence that they need!

  • the real problem... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 08, 2004 @11:01PM (#8506356)
    I would have trouble driving some of these roads myself

    The real problem is that his turn signal is on for 150 of the miles and confuses all the autonomous vehicles.

    • Re:the real problem... (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The reason this race is being done in a desert environment and sponsored by DARPA is so the US can take over more middle eastern nations.
      • Well, duh!

        Automated supply columns is the goal, the only flesh the .mil wants trekking across the desert wastes is the stuff in armour.


    • his turn signal is on

      I've always regarded this driving gaffe to be the moral equivalent of leaving one's fly open.

      And the steering wheel auto shut-off after a turn is completed is not enough.

      I swear, Caddies and Town Cars ought to be equipped with ramp function for loudness (up to DEF CON 5 buzzer level) and interior brightness (disco strobe light intensity) for turn signals as a helpful reminder that need to be shut off.

  • Education (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gid13 ( 620803 ) on Monday March 08, 2004 @11:01PM (#8506365)
    In vaguely related news, this Friday, my Eng Phys class (okay, not mine, I did it last year) is requiring the students to slalom autonomous vehicles around pylons of arbitrary position (though powered devices are allowed on top).

    As I said, I did the course last year (it was easier at the time), and let me tell you, it's harder than it looks. Hats off to anyone who even comes close to finishing this.
    • What university is this at? It sounds like a pretty cool project.
      • McMaster, in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

        It's a really cool class, although it is of course insane on the workload, and it sometimes doesn't help that the prof is really good and helpful in this class, but terrible and condescending in the class he teaches prior to everyone taking this one. Still, all in all a good experience.

  • I was all excited until..... (Score:5, Funny)

    by tyrani ( 166937 ) on Monday March 08, 2004 @11:10PM (#8506426)
    ...I read the articles and found out that there would be no hack-saw blades nor pneumatically controlled spike hammers.

    Now that would be an autonomous vehicle I'd pay to see.
  • I'm rooting for Virginia Tech just for using a great song in their video.

  • The Real Purpose Of This Contest (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Rhett ( 141440 ) on Monday March 08, 2004 @11:12PM (#8506440) Homepage
    Is to prove to the pentagon that terrorists with a million dollars in funding can't build this.

    Unfortunately, no one will will this contest.

  • Hrm (Score:2)

    by Cylix ( 55374 ) *
    Looks like the sat feed will be mostly useless...

    I couldn't imagine how much 2 hours will cover in a 200 mile automoton race.

    I was thinking of punching in the feed and then editing together a decent flick., but it looks like we will have to wait for someone else to release the video.

    Oh well, saves me time on having to punch in amc 9.

  • Red vs. Blue (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 08, 2004 @11:27PM (#8506552)
    Red Team [redteamracing.org]: "Muahaha! Bow before the greatest CS school in the universe and our giant Hummer that is smarter than you!"

    Blue Team [ghostriderrobot.com]: "Feh! We can beat you with two wheels tied behind our backs!" *obscene gesture*

    Red Team: "Come a little closer and say that."

  • Whatever happened to the wilderness areas? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Whatsmynickname ( 557867 ) on Monday March 08, 2004 @11:29PM (#8506569)

    How will these robots be routed around wilderness areas generated by the California Wilderness Protection Act [reason.com]?

    Wasn't the Barstow to Vegas motorcycle race [off-road.com] cancelled due to declaration of these same wilderness areas? How is DARPA ensuring these vehicles aren't going to run over some tortoise?

    Dont' get me wrong, as I'm no tree-hugger. However, it seems the Wilderness protection act only applies to people who cannot afford a congressman...

    • Re:Whatever happened to the wilderness areas? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 08, 2004 @11:43PM (#8506689)
      From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution article [ajc.com]:

      And some fear that, at speeds that might reach 50 mph, the robots also pose a threat to the desert tortoise --- a federally threatened species and the official state reptile of California. Sluggish after a winter of hibernation, the tortoises usually emerge from their burrows this time of year.

      Under orders from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, teams of biologists will sweep the race corridor before the competition, moving any tortoises out of harm's way and fencing their burrows until the robots pass.

      The tortoises, which have resided in the Mojave for 60 million years and, as individuals, often live to be 100, probably won't pay much mind.

      • See, that's what confuses me...

        I thought the wilderness act didn't allow any vehicles at all. I can't even ride a mountain bike through a wilderness area. Yet, they allow this race with unmanned vehicles?

        Ironically, I wouldn't be allowed to test my own USV, if I were in the process of developing one, in the same area. Even if I were testing a UAV, the UAV would not be allowed to land on any wilderness property!!! I shouldn't even ask about riding a motorcycle through here...

        Yet, they're going to let

        • Waypoints were significantly revised several times last year to provide plenty of manuvering room around EnviroNazily-protected areas.
        • Yet, they're going to let these vehicles rip through a supposedly fragile ecosystem? I ask, where is the fairness in all of this?

          First, it's a one time rip by 25 vehicles (plus the DARPA observers). Doesn't sound like a lot of environmental damage even if they make it a regular occurance. Second, it's not clear to me that they're running through a wilderness area. We'll see where they go on Saturday.

    • Re:Whatever happened to the wilderness areas? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Wesley Felter ( 138342 ) <wesley@felter.org> on Monday March 08, 2004 @11:53PM (#8506752) Homepage
      The robots have to follow a predefined route or they are remotely deactivated; I assume that DARPA has chosen a route that doesn't go through environmentally-sensitive areas.

  • The ultimate RC car (Score:5, Funny)

    by daemonc ( 145175 ) on Monday March 08, 2004 @11:40PM (#8506668)
    I want one of these [oshkoshtruck.com] for Christmas, damnit! You could run over your neighbor's house with that mo fo...

  • Current status? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Monday March 08, 2004 @11:47PM (#8506720) Homepage
    We (Team Overbot [overbot.com]) dropped out over a month ago. We couldn't deliver a safe vehicle in time. Two of us are flying down tomorrow to watch.

    At least two other teams have formally dropped out, and we expect some no-shows.

    CMU is the favorite. Fifty people, $3.4 million spent to date, direct support from aerospace companies, and a team leader who expects people to work all night, day after day. (Read the article in the current Scientific American.) But their technology is rather disappointing. The whole route is preplanned by hand, using a bunch of people at workstations in a big trailer with maps obtained by overflying the route with LIDAR-equipped reconnaissance aircraft. It's not very autonomous. They found a loophole in the rules and exploited it very effectively. There's no breakthrough there.

    Anthony Lewandosky, with his self-balancing motorcycle, has the most innovative technology. We've met him, and are impressed.

    Palos Verdes High School has a viable entry, using a Honda Acura. We've loaned them some hardware. They've had autonomous driving working for months. They started by having handicapped driving control actuators put into a car, which simplified their mechanical problems. They debugged using a golf cart. Very nice work.

    Caltech tried to qualify today, but their vehicle made an unexpected turn and bumped into something. They get a second chance on Wednesday.

    Most likely, no one will finish. Nobody has really done enough field testing yet.

    John Nagle

    • Caltech tried to qualify today, but their vehicle made an unexpected turn and bumped into something. They get a second chance on Wednesday

      Yeah, our software freaked when it saw the "cow catcher" and tried to backup the vehicle, but drove forward instead because the gear selection software was messed-up. We should be in good shape for our run on Wednesday.

      • Re:Current status? (Score:3, Informative)

        by Animats ( 122034 )
        We've had trouble with that. The transmission in the Polaris Ranger won't reliably go into a gear selected by position only. There's too much slop in the linkage. We need to open up the transmission and put a sensor inside it.
    • I saw articles about the race in several magazines. It seems like everyone is bashing CMU and thier big expensive Hummer. It's not very elegent, but nobody says it has to be. The challenge is 250 miles over desert terrain in 10 hours. That's nasty no matter how many loopholes you find.

      All I want is a highway autopilot in my car. Maybe it will take 8 or 10 years to get there, but I want a damn autopilot.

      -B

      • Since they already allowed a Hummer, that provision about not destroying everything in the vehicle's path must have been dropped.

        So may I suggest that next year someone use one of these: GAZ 3937 Dragun [www.rbs.ru] or Vodnik [leninburg.com]. It runs on an amphibious platform, it costs less than a Humvee and it appears to be even better at all-terrain handling. And it has a better potential for irony.

    • Re:Current status? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Freeptop ( 123103 )
      I have to take issue with the ideas expressed that, a) the Team Red robot is not autonomous, and b) there isn't any impressive technology in their robot.
      First, I'll address a). Autonomous means that it drives itself with no outside control. I'm assuming that you are implying that having detailed maps constitutes outside control. I disagree. When a person drives somewhere they've never been before, they usually use maps themselves. If they've been there and are familiar with the area, they basically already
      • DARPA's rules for the Grand Challenge said this: [darpa.mil]
        • DARPA is seeking to promote innovative technical approaches that will enable the autonomous operation of unmanned ground combat vehicles. In the future, such combat vehicles will operate over varied terrain without the benefit of road signs, pre-programmed routes, etc. Autonomous vehicles must navigate from point to point in an intelligent manner so as to avoid or accommodate obstacles and other impediments to the completion of their missions.

        To insure

    • Too bad CMU rolled their vehicle on March 4th. At this point I'm not sure if they're still the favorites. I sure hope so, I have a couple friends on the team.

      They lost a significant amount of their equipment when it rolled, including a quarter million dollar gimbal

      For more info on their roll, check out their race log [redteamracing.org]

  • The favorite? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Innominate Milquetoa ( 695071 ) on Monday March 08, 2004 @11:47PM (#8506721)
    So how does the favored team [popsci.com] train for a 210 mile race through the Mojave Desert?? Why, by testing it in the SNOW [cmu.edu] of course!
    • They've been working on something like this since the early '90s. Used to see them out there testing the thing on the paved paths through Schenley Park, which is right next to the University. Back then it was a big hard top cargo HMMWV, still camoflauged, with a bunch of sensors strapped on - not nearly as mean looking as the stripped down red monster pictured in the articles.
  • I love that show! DARPA with her wacky ideals and her lawyer partner with a corncob in the butt.

  • Entries too complicated? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by evilviper ( 135110 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2004 @12:30AM (#8506991) Journal
    Is it just me, or are these entries too complex?

    I admit I haven't made anything like this (although I've made some very advanced machines before) but it seems to me that a half-dozen laser range-finders connected to a laptop would do just nicely.

    You could tell how far you were from the left/right of the road, and how far in-front of you an obsticle or change in terrain is (and can slow-down appropriately).

    I suppose you'd also have to throw-in a $200 GPS reciever, since they have a "course", and you'll need to do more than just follow the road. But that seems to be all you'd need to accomplish this (yes I'm glossing over the basics, because they're just the basics).

    So please, find fault in my idea. I'd like to know why this $5000 solution wouldn't work, and why 3+ million is required.
    • OK I'll bite. For a start, you've got to control the vehicle in some way. The rules state it can't go over a certain speed and they need a remote shutdown capability for safety. It needs to work out when to speed up, slow down and give way to traffic. Real tricky over uneven terrain.

      Also, the laser range finder might work if you were driving through a tunnel, but in this case it's very hard to work out where the edge of the road is because there are no walls. What's the range finder going to bounce off? I'

      • For a start, you've got to control the vehicle in some way. The rules state it can't go over a certain speed

        What do you think the Notebook is for? It will select how far to push the piston onto the gas/brake, and how to steer.

        they need a remote shutdown capability for safety

        So trivial I don't even want to bother covering that...

        It needs to work out when to speed up, slow down and give way to traffic.

        Yes, that's what I've already covered. The range-finders will tell you how far you are from any obst

        • One thing to note is that much of the race will be off road. I would think that simply using range finders would be insufficient for desert driving where there is no artifical demarcation in the terrain.
        • OK Wise arse, where is your car, I see you make it sound sooooo simple...whereas all you have demonstrated is that you have NO , NADA, ZIP, NIL ZERO understanding of the challenges involved...

          Come on then show us yours...if its so damned simple.

          I bet you are a manager...they seem to have the same attitudes, its just a little scripting and all the tools already exist don't they, and why do you need a better laptop, isn't that 400MHz P3 good enough, its fine for my presentation software...

          I bet you once di
          • whereas all you have demonstrated is that you have NO , NADA, ZIP, NIL ZERO understanding of the challenges involved...

            You say I'm wrong without any facts to back it up, and someone is supposed to believe your claim?
            • You say I'm wrong without any facts to back it up, and someone is supposed to believe your claim?

              You say you're right without anything to back it up, and someone is supposed to believe your claim?
              • First off, the parent has shown that he must not know much about vehicles in the first place. Acting like providing a remote shut-off is going to be a difficult an expensive thing to do.

                Also saying completely moronic things, as if a laser range finder has to have a perfectly parallel object to find distances.

                He's shown that he doesn't know much, and nobody has even DISPUTED any of the points I've made (if he claimed that laser range-finders wouldn't work, I'd be happy to prove him wrong). Instead, he ju

    • Re:Entries too complicated? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Some parts are off road, thus you need to navigate around rocks, hills/gullies, potholes etc etc etc. Here [redteamracing.org] are some previous generation stuff that the Robotics Institute at CMU has done over the las 20 years, many of which involve autonomous highway driving, but driving off road is much harder as you cant follow any lane markers and you need to determine the best path so you don't flip over. [redteamracing.org]

    • Re:Entries too complicated? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Paul Komarek ( 794 ) <komarek.paul@gmail.com> on Tuesday March 09, 2004 @01:09AM (#8507240) Homepage
      I don't think you're going to get six good laser rangefinders for $5000. I don't remember the numbers as well as I would like, but I think the current favorite rangefinders (I think the brand is SIC?) are well over $1000 each. And you will quickly exhaust your laptop's computational power just denoising the output from crappy sensors. Heck, maybe even for the best sensors.

      Autonomous vehicles have already driven across the country on highways, 98.2% of the time without human intervention. The roads it drove on are (I'm guessing) likely to be much nicer than those in the desert. Furthermore there was a human available to handle the surprises. For humor value: I believe one of the self-driving vechicles from CMU has a learner's permit from the state of Pennsylvania. See No Hands Across America [cmu.edu] for more info on this project.

      The hard part of any project like this is uncertainty in the environment. The road may "disappear" completly from your sensors, or you may spot multiple roads. Maybe some mica on a rock screws up your rangefinder. Maybe your vehcicle's transmission gets a little "funny" and you can't shift properly anymore (I saw such a comment attached to this article). And we aren't even talking about genuine malfunctions like a failing rangefinder or sticky throttle.

      I think autonomous systems might be the best example of the best laid plans of mice and men not succeeding when the slightest thing goes wrong. In fact, Steinbeck's story seems directly analgous to the problems of self-driving vehicles.

      -Paul Komarek

      • I don't think you're going to get six good laser rangefinders for $5000.

        Okay, I can live with that. Let's just say I lowballed it, and move on.

        And you will quickly exhaust your laptop's computational power just denoising the output from crappy sensors.

        I have a hard time beliving that. With multi-multi-GHz processors available, I think it can be done. You'd only need to sample each one about 10x each second.

        The road may "disappear" completly from your sensors

        At which point you quickly slow-down to

        • You want to minimize the chance of destruction whether you're on a city street or in the desert. I doubt there's a prize for coolest disaster.

          On the other stuff, I think I didn't communicate my point effectively. You can't just read sensors and rely on their data. Sensors return wrong data, even laser rangefinders. Picking out which data is good and which is bad requires more computation than just 10 serial port reads per second.

          Until a person has been involved with these sorts of projects it is very
        • You'd only need to sample each one about 10x each second.

          Exactly what speed are you expecting to be driving here?

          At 50 mph a vehicle covers 75 feet every second. You're comfy with driving 7.5 feet before figuring out that there's a boulder, ravine, barb wire (have fun with the laser range finder detecting that btw), or other hazard in the way? Not to mention that the entire concept of "road" is an interesting one, given that this is an off-road course.

          GPS isn't going to cut it either -- there's a sectio

          • You're comfy with driving 7.5 feet before figuring out that there's a boulder, ravine,

            If the range-finder is aimed more than 8 feet ahead, it's not too big of a problem... Besides, you have numerous sensors, and presumably they wouldn't all be sampling at exactly the same instant, so you'd have a more continuous picture.

            barb wire (have fun with the laser range finder detecting that btw),

            Yes, I've already discussed that in a seperate thread. Quite simply, barbed wire wouldn't do serious damage to a veh

      • I think autonomous systems might be the best example of the best laid plans of mice and men not succeeding when the slightest thing goes wrong. In fact, Steinbeck's story seems directly analgous to the problems of self-driving vehicles.


        Well, no shit. Do you really expect a robust autonomous system to be developed by mice? ...always daydreaming about cheese. Sheesh!
    • Let's see. The range finders can't tell you what angle the vehicle is at, can't tell you the size of objects, or if an object is moving. Blah blah blah blah.

      There are a lot of faults with your idea. But I do agree, $3 million is a lot to spend on this and the team who spent that barely has an "autonomous" vechicle since they have to pre-plan the whole course the vehicle will take.

    • The SICK laser range scanners (LMS-XXX) are more on the order of $5K each and are pretty much the world standard in laser scanner instrumentation. The interesting thing is that the DARPA Grand Challenge has put a noticeable strain on the supply of these units. The only reason the project I work with was able to get one in the last few months was some surplus refurbished units turned up in Germany after an order was cancelled.
    • this is my experience with driving an autonomous robot in a competition some years back:

      we had a little Lego MindStorms robot and were supposed to have it go over lego street tracks, which, to make recognition easier, had a large thick black stripe in the middle. the cars were to create a complete map of the course and were then to find an obstacle (using front bumper sensors) and route the fastest track around it.

      you would think that in autonomous driving, nothing is easier than staying centered over a l
      • does anyone else think it's scary how many military sponsors are on _all_ entrant's web pages?

        Er... why? After all, this is funded by DARPA for the express purpose of military use. Did you expect to see Greenpeace sponsoring them?

      • the engines behaved somewhat uncontrollably

        I don't know what you mean by that... Was it difficult to steer or something?

        the sensors were sometimes erroneous

        I did plan for redundancy. Did you have any redundancy in your vehicles? From the size, I would suspect not.

        Also, with a full-fledged computer on-board, it can have much more smarts than a simple embedded system that will follow the sensor, no matter how inconsistent the data may be. With a computer, you can check the data over several samples,

  • Nice choice of dates! Too bad it wasn't a Friday, the worse the Karma the better. Surely this is a cruel plot orchestrated by Microsoft to prevent anyone from winning that million dollars by bringing the bad ju-ju of the 13th into the contest! I'm sure of it! As proof, I offer the Christmas Y letter.. Shit, where'd I put that. *digs around desk* *knocks down tower of beer cans*
  • It is a well known fact that military vehicle driving is one of the few high-paying positions that less-educated individuals can qualify for.

    It is equally obvious that by using this so-called contest, the Pentagon is trying to obtain for themselves a cheap automated replacement for human vehicle operators. No hazard pay, no training no insurance needed for robots. And a bargain at $1 million.

    And where will that leave formerly well-paid and regarded vehicle operators? Walkng across minefields with p
    • Nope. It is called less human risk to do certain dangerous jobs ( recon, recon by fire, demo an obstacle, or destroy in general etc etc. ) Not unlike the X-45 or X-47 UCAV which can bomb a target with single digit CEP in any weather with no aircrew risk. In both cases the weaponeering is already figured out. The hard part is moving around consistantly. Less people on the battlefield is also less supplies that have to be moved up to sustain that person day after day. ( food, water, material; including less

  • Oh no (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by mcbridematt ( 544099 )
    Is it just be or is DARPA now considering every slashdotter a threat to national security because we took their site down?

    (I'm in Australia on iPrimus dialup here, and darpa.mil fails to DNS resolve.)
  • I wonder if I can bet on the race. However, I have my doubts that any of them will cross the finish line.

  • Why no news? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SiliconEntity ( 448450 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2004 @02:50AM (#8507705)
    I'm disappointed that there is not more information available about this event as it happens. I've been following it vicariously for months, and now I'd like to hear about what is happening at the speedway in Fontana. How many teams showed up? How many tried out today? Which passed, which failed? I haven't been able to find out any of that information.

    The so-called Science Blog article was from February 10! That's not exactly timely, is it?

    Nagle's later posting here does present some information about Caltech. The Caltech team web page [caltech.edu] provides the same basic info, with a little different spin. But I guess we're lucky they posted today; the previous entry on the team's news page was dated November 16, 2003.

    CMU [redteamracing.org] has been updating almost every day, but their last entry was Saturday, saying "The curtain goes up Monday morning". Again, what happened?

    You'd think in this age of bloggers, when every windbag on the net sees fit to tell us what he had for lunch that day, someone would be watching this event and posting some updates in the evening. If this isn't happening, I beg anyone who is attending to step up and start writing! Maybe I'm spoiled by the usual instant access to information, but I'm passionately interested in this event and starving for news.
    • Well, CMU was probably working pretty hard since their robot flipped and destroyed a bunch of equipment. But there is a post about successful qualification on monday [redteamracing.org] .
      • From redteamracing.org:

        "We qualify at 1430 to earn our access to Saturday's Grand Challenge."

        I think that this was written before they qualified. According to DARPA's press release yesterday, Red Team did not attempt qualification yesterday.

  • Mark Burnett where are you? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by John Harrison ( 223649 ) <johnharrison@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday March 09, 2004 @07:08AM (#8508487) Homepage Journal
    Somebody really missed the boat here. They should have turned this into a reality TV show. Film each of the teams getting ready, introduce us to the robots, and then film the race, editing it for maximal drama.

    I can't believe that somebody didn't buy this thing up. If not a broadcast network then at least the Discovery Channel (science oriented angle) or Spike TV(monster truck robots race across the desert angle).

    Somehow I don't think that the military feed is going to reach a wide audience. I won't be able to see it.

    • Re:Mark Burnett where are you? (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I do media work for one of the teams, and we hired a crew and shopped footage around to Discovery, Spike, etc.

      I think the nets are afraid after Robot Wars has kind of stalled. This race is a little over their heads. PBS NOVA did show up, and will do a 1 hour special.

      In reality, International press has been all over us, while US Press has just started to get interested.
    • How many reality shows feature truly "normal" people, let alone what are most likely geeks? How many viewers are truly going to grok the complexity of the software and what not? People may enjoy watching the race itself for a little while, but the majority of the stuff the audience is unlikely to be able to appreciate.
      • Frontier House on PBS two years ago featured normal people and was less manufactured than more reality fare. I think there is a market for a DARPA Challenge show. Another poster said NOVA was going to do a show on it, which would be great. Now I just need a Tivo so I can make sure to catch it.
        • PBS is a non-profit entity, unlike the aforementioned networks. Also, did the show do well? Even the major networks make mistakes fail to recoup their investments from time to time.
          • Did Frontier House do well? It was a major hit for PBS and a minor phenomenon in the larger media. Entertainment shows that usually only feature commercial network fare mentioned it. My wife found out about it from Oprah.

            The thing about reality TV is the the investment is minimal, especially in this situation in which the event will occur anyhow.

  • Are we so foolish as to allow these things to happen with no protest?

    Surely we already can see the ultimate outcome of this horrible, slippery slope: we will entrust robots to ferry supplies and medicine to our soldiers, allow robots to fight fires, diffuse bombs, vacuum our carpets and build our automobiles. Eventually we will allow them to remotely fight our wars for us - robots blowing up other robots while we watch the outcome on quasi-unscripted reality shows with names like Police Action 5: Burma.

  • Day 1 Field Report (Score:2, Informative)

    by EvilXenu ( 706326 )
    Although the kick-off isn't until March 13th, the days leading up to it include Qualifying and Demoing time. Below is a friend's field report after Day 1, posted with his permission:

    Total attendance was probably arround 350-450 people. I think there were about 50 people that attended that were not associated in any way to the race.

    Vehicle inspections were performed on several vehicles the morning of the first day. The inspectors were verifying functionality of safety devices including the e-stop butt

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