Stanford and Volkswagen Create Autonomous Vehicle 235
nght2000 writes "Stanford University has created an autonomous driving robot to compete in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge Race. The race will be held on October 8, 2005 in the desert Southwest. The team that develops an autonomous ground vehicle that finishes the designated route most quickly within 10 hours will receive $2 million. The route will be no more than 175 miles over desert terrain featuring natural and man-made obstacles. The Stanford Racing Team's vehicle is a Volkswagen R5 turbo diesel Touareg that was donated by Volkswagen of America. The Stanford Team has been working with the Volkswagen Electronics Research Laboratory on the project."
hah! (Score:2, Funny)
YAY!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:YAY!!! (Score:4, Informative)
I can't believe that Herbie is taking precedence over KITT here. I know it's a VW and all, but yeesh, KITT's got der bliken lights!
Red Team (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Red Team (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Red Team (Score:2)
Now if only the could work around that 256kb directory struct size limit CODA imposes on all directories in a volume, I'd be a very happy guy.
Re:Red Team (Score:2)
Re:Red Team (Score:2, Insightful)
Not only do they have a well designed system, they're using a Hummer H1. I know it doesn't matter what vehicle wins, but when you're competing in a DARPA funded contest, using a HUMMER is more impressive than a VW.
The people's car... (Score:5, Funny)
Good thing, too... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good thing, too... (Score:5, Funny)
Only on Slashdot would that statement be qualified by "I heard that". :-P
Re:The people's car... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:The people's car... (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, it DOES help with the goal of making cars that can drive themselves eventually. This could help lots of people who can't drive a car, or who wouldn't want to. Eventually leading to every car thats made being automatic.
That's a good thing, and it's not a waste of time. It's progress under the guise of a contest, to make it fun and competitive. There's no
Re:The people's car... (Score:4, Interesting)
God, yes.
I live in Atlanta. I work on one side of town, I room on the other. I go 25 miles each way. Average speed of 25mph. That's 2 hours a day I spend in the car.
If I could get into my car, type in a destination, and read, have breakfast, catch the last 10 winks, or write the great American novel while the car did the work, I would jump at it like a shot.
I realize that what I want out of an autonomous car is available, mostly, as public transportation. Unfortunately, public transportation in Atlanta is a joke. To do the 25 miles from my house to the office takes 2 hours, on 2 different systems, with three transfers. That's 4 hours a day in transit, provided nothing breaks down and the buses aren't late. I tried it, and I had just enough time left over in the day to sleep. Not eat, just sleep.
I saw a test car and strip of highway (somewhere in California, IIRC) that worked together as an autopilot. Drivers could enter the freeway, tell the computer what exit they wanted to get off at, and let the car drive itself. Little pips in the tarmac told the car where the lanes were, the on-board did the steering, and the central controller managed congestion by telling the cars what speed was best for the volume of traffic, when to change lanes, and when to wake (pardon me, alert) the driver that the exit was near.
Anyone out there remember this? Is it still under development?
Anyone care to speculate how soon I can get a robot chaffeur or auto-highway?
And does anyone remember...Sally? Asimov fans will know what I mean.
Re:The people's car... (Score:2)
Besides, the field of positronics in platinum-iridium just hasn't progressed as expected.
Re:The people's car... (Score:2)
DUI (Score:3, Interesting)
In addidition to convenience, autonomous, or even street-directed, vehicles could nearly eliminate the problem with DUI.
With smart streets, traffic control could also be much improved, with, for example, the freeway directing vehicles to shift position slightly for injection of merging vehicles.
Speeds could be significantly increased, and vehicles could be placed on bulk carriers (e.g., trains).
With good enough control and timing (many years after initial introduction), vehicles could be sent through int
Re:The people's car... (Score:3, Interesting)
Uhhhh... No... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Uhhhh... No... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Uhhhh... No... (Score:2)
Re:Uhhhh... No... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Uhhhh... No... (Score:3, Funny)
Don't be a chicken.
---------
Remember, drive defensively! And of course, the best defense is a good offense!
Re:Uhhhh... No... (Score:2)
It might work better in Texas. They could try to do that in California but they would have to remove the cannon, use California-certified fuel and give one to Arnold.
I worked on this project for a few hours (Score:5, Interesting)
this specifically won't work (Score:5, Informative)
It is guaranted that the vehicle has to pass through a tunnel or other type of obstruction that disables GPS.
Also, it is guaranteed that all roads will have obsticles at random locations that must be avoided. I understand that there are points where the vehicle must do an obstacle course and avoiding it or jumping over it is banned.
Re:this specifically won't work (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:this specifically won't work (Score:4, Informative)
Re:this specifically won't work (Score:4, Informative)
I do recall reading in Leatherneck magazine about a project the USN was undertaking involving unmanned subs that were to be used as long range sonar platforms and possibly very long range torpedos.
While operating underwater GPS is useless, but dead reckoning (Speed * Time = distance, distance @ bearing = position relative to start position) is still useful. The subs they were working on used a combination of surfacing for GPS, dead reckoning, and sonar navigation to avoid obstacles to reach their goal. I haven't read Leatherneck since I retired from the USMC, so I don't know what became of this project.
I think the point of this exercise is to use a mix of technolgies to accomplish the task. The most efficient mix, in theory, will win.
Re:this specifically won't work (Score:3, Informative)
Guess you're a little behind on GPS-gyros. Here's an example:
http://www.brilliant-electronics.com/car_position
Swell . . . (Score:2)
Swell.
*Now* what am I supposed to do with this JATO unit?
I suppose that I could mount it in the back of my father's old Chevy wagon . .
hawk
Re:this specifically won't work (Score:2)
Re:I worked on this project for a few hours (Score:2)
And that's just the simple solution. A truly skilled solution would also involve a camera and software to identify the road boundaries.
Re:I worked on this project for a few hours (Score:2)
This is the first time in my life I've said this, but: Damn kids, when I was your age , we had to track things using compasses, sextants, etc. Didn't have things like GPS (available to the general public anyway). But we also didn't get confused by tunnels.
So have we advanced, or fallen behind?
Re:I worked on this project for a few hours (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I worked on this project for a few hours (Score:2)
Re:I worked on this project for a few hours (Score:2)
Instead of simply assuming you automatically know what it's all about, why don't you go read about it, then tell us what you think if you still feel you have something interesting to say? (Hint: It isn't just a bunch of cars that follow a predetermined route. Hence, everything else you said is pointless. Indeed, your "idea" would actually be far easier than the real event.)
Re:China and Autonomous Robots: the Military Angle (Score:2)
Re:China and Autonomous Robots: the Military Angle (Score:2)
China has the largest infantry in the world, they don't need robots.
market potential? (Score:4, Funny)
Bulk purchases of these robots, modified for high-speed runs of less than 30 minutes, is under consideration by Domino's Pizza.
Re:market potential? (Score:3)
Music, movies, microcode and... yep, here it comes. It'll be robots doing the delivery and not samurai or skaters, but near enough I suppose.
They're a bit optimistic.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering no vehicle has made it more than a couple miles in these races before, I find it pretty funny that they include the "finished most quickly" bit. If anyone could finish at all it would be a huge leap forward. Some of the footage last year was pretty amusing. One in particular I remember was a big SUV looking vehicle that was really moving, made it about 2 miles before it got stuck. Seems to me they'd be better served if they laid off the emphasis on speed for the time being and just got to the point where a sharp turn can be safely negotiated.
Re:They're a bit optimistic.. (Score:2)
Re:They're a bit optimistic.. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:They're a bit optimistic.. (Score:3, Funny)
This is the same advice I give to my mother and it's yet to have an effect.
But how many humans can do the job? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:But how many humans can do the job? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parts of that is paved roads, parts unpaved roads and parts "offroad". This means you can do like walking-speed on the offroad-parts and still manage it fine.
Infact I'd take a bet that 9 out of 10 got-drivers-license-yesterday humans would be able to do this in less than half the time allocated to the robots, probably a good driver would do it in a quarter the time the robots get. That'd require him to average 68mph.
Re:But how many humans can do the job? (Score:5, Interesting)
Even in relatively benign terrain, a speed of about 15 MPH is actually moving pretty quickly. These aren't $2M one-time-use lightweight 500HP Paris-Dakar desert racers with a navigator, an 8-ton supply-laden chase truck. These are extremely heavy fully autonomous machines. If you read the rules, they're even supposed to refuel themselves without human intervention should it become necessary. It's really, really easy to break stuff at only 15 MPH, particularly when you consider how heavy these robots are.
Also, the paved sections are very short -- I haven't looked at the 2004 course in quite awhile and I'm not sure if the 05 proposed courses are up yet, but it was something like only 10% of the entire route -- and then you're not permitted to exceed the speed limit, which I think was pretty low -- 50 MPH or thereabouts.
It's very, very hard.
Re:But how many humans can do the job? (Score:2)
First, "terrain like this" in this case means a mix of paved roads, unpaved roads, trails and "desert". It does *not* like you seem to think mean "offroad-only", I was never suggesting even a skilled driver would do 68mph average on the off-road sections.
You're correct that the speed-limits migth prevent even a skilled driver from completing in a quarter of the alloted time, obviously if he can't go over say 55 even on the paved parts that's going
Re:But how many humans can do the job? (Score:2)
Re:But how many humans can do the job? (Score:3, Informative)
There are stages where the fastest cars reach about 200 km/h. Other stages took more than 24 hours for some people (average 20 km/h), but most of that would be spent standing still and digging the vehicle out.
Re:But how many humans can do the job? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:But how many humans can do the job? (Score:2)
Aspects of it are close to production ready now http://www.mmsi.com/autonomous.shtml [mmsi.com], including schedules, obstacle avoidance and more. The flaw with current autonomous vehicles for this test is the need to train them. I still reckon an autonomous 210 tonne dump truck would get further than most of the competition though, especially if they got in its way early in the race.
Re:But how many humans can do the job? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:But how many humans can do the job? (Score:2)
I think another team made it something like 1.5 miles.
Nobody else got very far, and a lot never managed to even start.
It's far more difficult than people raised on a steady diet of sci-fi believe it to be.
Re:But how many humans can do the job? (Score:2)
What do you get when you cross ... (Score:2, Funny)
I wish I had more, but I kinda ran out of gas. Really I should have hit the brakes after the first one, but once I'm in gear I can't stop until I crash and burn.
Mod Parrent.... (Score:3, Funny)
Crap....
Re:What do you get when you cross ... (Score:2)
Re:What do you get when you cross ... (Score:2)
Oh. How gay.
Re:What do you get when you cross ... (Score:2)
That's because (Score:2)
Apparently, checking your sense of humor and history at the door is a requirement to be an administrator there, too . .
hawk
Watch for my Jetta... (Score:2)
Ha, I am going to enter my Jetta which will be piloted by my Robosapien that I picked up at Best Buy. It'll blow that Touareg out of the water!
Google / Stanford team too? (Score:4, Interesting)
If google are involved... (Score:2)
Herbie! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Herbie! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Herbie! (Score:2)
"On the road of life... (Score:5, Interesting)
As someone who went to CMU, I'm of course rooting for the home team, but it is fun to read about the other guys. For the on-road stuff, they had those trucks zipping driver-less, pretty fast, through Schenley Park back in the 90's, so it'll be interesting to see if they can keep on the trail this time for the off-road challenge.
Hi Stanford & CMU (Score:2, Interesting)
-Cornell
I only have one thing to say.. (Score:3, Funny)
Combine with the other car dream (Score:2, Informative)
The biggest complaint against flying automobiles is how every-one (and their dog) would be able to drive (fly) like a bat out of hell. Literally, in this case.
So, get autonomous driving working, get people used to it on the ground, then going airborne is just a next step.
Re:Combine with the other car dream (Score:2)
You've got it very backwards. Airplanes have been flying autonomously for more than a decade. Flying is very well suited to automation, driving is a much more difficult problem. The aviation industry has reached the point now, under recent reduced separation rules, there's a lot of pieces of airspace where manually flying the airplanes isn't even permitted anymore.
I Cried (Score:4, Interesting)
Thats simply not the case. DARPA hands out the final destination a day before launch and the teams madly scramble to find a route to send their vehicle down (on nice sat photos). Then they send the vehicle off on its own. What sort of fun is that?
Knowing this, I'm ashamed how poor last years competition was. The winning team was pretty sweet, but I certainly expect a lot more competitive entries this year. Hand most any college worth its salt $25,000 and let the CS & ME's go to. In a year they should build something which could at least contend with the DARPA incumbent.
As it stands the whole thing requires almost no intelligence. The whole point, from a computer engineers' biased persepctive, was to get people building robots aware of their surroundings. The Berkeley city auto-mapper robot is a perfect example; couple that with Sandstorm and then maybe I'm interested. But so many teams can make a robot which FAILS to track a GPS path while staying moderately on the road is just beyond me.
I understand the whole point is that the terrain is supposedly "hostile"... But when you're driving an `86 Hummer, its quite apparent that any area full of enough dangerous terrain to give you a problem will likely be seen on the sat-maps.
Myren
Re:I Cried (Score:2)
You do realize that no one "won" last year, right?
The team that failed the least horribly only made it a dozen or 2 miles before the converted Hummer broke an axle, some of the "finalists" never made the first turn at about 50 feet. so I would say that it is actually pretty tough even given a CD with all the GPS coordinates and course widths.
Of course all of this is from memory so everything above is probably factually incorrect except that NO ONE made the entire trip autonomously, within the time limit o
Re:I Cried (Score:4, Interesting)
For instance, my school's robot was doing well until it hit a chain link fence. As it turned out, the chain-link fence was almost invisible to the car's vision system -- think about it, it's a bunch of air with these little tiny lines which are pretty hard to distinguish from debris in the air and such. You try writing a computer program that can accurately determine the presence of chain link fencing in a photograph and then see what you think.
As for GPS, again it doesn't tell you whether there's a fence, cow, brick wall, etc. standing in the way, and GPS was blocked for large sections of the course. If you're suggesting dead reckoning instead, note that that's really, really hard even under ideal conditions and essentially impossible outdoors. If a car gets one degree off course and travels 60 miles, it'll end up a mile off of the road, perhaps gleefully crashing through houses / oncoming traffic.
Re:I Cried (Score:2)
For one thing, there is a time limit. You'd never come anywhere close to finishing if you took the bumper-car approach. On top of that, some of those obstacles aren't of the "bump into it" variety -- streams and ditches, for example. There are also obstacles which are designed to require visu
No no no. (Score:2)
The waypoints are given to each of the teams something like 3 hours before the beginning of the race. My school's team then takes the CD and puts it into the onboard computer system which then does everything. Certain other teams have (in the past :) simply used the time to specify an exact course themselves, resulting in little useful technology for the military like you said. Our vehicle staying within 20 cm of the computed path, mostly due to the actuators because the vehicle was built by us as oppose
Re:I Cried (Score:2)
Re:I Cried (Score:2)
In my experience getting a car to follow a precalculated path at decent speed in the first place is quite hard, even in a simulation.
I did this for a game running on a karma physics engine, and I was not allowed to cheat with physics. Controlling oversteer and understeer, and accurately predicting the consequences of wheels loosing contact with the ground, is a lot harder than I expected, even in
Re:I Cried (Score:2)
Actually, if you had read a little bit about the competition, you would know that there start/end points and designated waypoints, along with acceptable corridors of varying widths between and around those waypoints. The "routes" that were pre-loaded could only be considered recommendations, at best.
As it stands the whole thing requires almost no intelligence.
While not a competitor, I was very close to one of th
Hey, VW, how about making diesel cars (Score:2)
Re:Hey, VW, how about making diesel cars (Score:5, Interesting)
Golf, Beetle, Jetta, Passat, Toureg are all available with TDI engines. Try em out, but the waiting list is pretty lengthy because they are selling like freakin' hot cakes.
My wife and I keep our TDI pumped with biodiesel too. Less emissions, less smell, and our gas was living plant material mere years (or months) ago. Staying in the current carbon cycle is better than releasing carbon stored millions of years ago.
Re:Hey, VW, how about making diesel cars (Score:2)
Re:Hey, VW, how about making diesel cars (Score:2)
Let me venture a guess... (Score:3, Insightful)
*Remove tinfoil hat*
My school is in this competition (Score:4, Interesting)
In terms of technology, well, outside of the Turing test, this is sorta like the Super Bowl of AI. My team/part of the project dealt with Machine Vision, which has proven to be quite difficult for a lot of people (including me!). Real time scene analysis is *very* computationally expensive, and you have to make guesses and inferences as optical signal data fluxes around constantly, a lot of the time completely rendering your approach useless.
Even though from life experiences I know that Life Isnt Fair, and the playing field is never level, some of these teams get insane advantages. I wont even go into CMU (ok, I will: they have basically Defense Contractor backing, parts, and consultants, and like 7 million dollars to spend on the project), and here stanford has sponsorship with volkswagen. I was suprised Cal Tech didnt get more major sponsors, but they might have for round 2 of the challenge. No one has near the advantage of CMU though, their main LIDAR cost more than a lot of people's whole car/setup.
Aside from that, for me this project has been a blast. The work, needless to say, is very unique and its almost like a mini-1960's space race, "first one to the finish line!". Its funny how some people try different angles, spend millions of dollars, and then get foiled by a rut in the road that hangs their car up (I'm tellin ya, if the sun shifts even slightly all vision input outside of lidar can basically go to sh!t if you arent careful, and if your lidar doesnt pick it up, well...)
Regardless of whoever makes it to the top 30, it will be interesting to see if anyone finishes this year. Darpa3, maybe?
Electrical problem (Score:2, Funny)
Windows (Score:2)
Re:Windows (Score:2)
I told you so!
They *are* putting MS Windows into cars!
hawk
On the road of life (Score:3, Funny)
Great. That's just great.
Re:CMU did this year ago (Score:5, Funny)
Only if Grand Theft Auto was pre-installed.
Re:CMU did this year ago (Score:2)
Re:CMU did this year ago (Score:2)
Re:Watch out for that tree! (Score:2)
George of the Jungle,
Strong as he can be.
(Ahhhhhhhh)
Watch out for that tree!
Re:What if... (Score:2)
Re:What if... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hire a Berkeley team and get it won (Score:2)
Re:175miles @ 10 hours = 17.5mph (Score:2)