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Robotics Science

DARPA Grand Challenge Teams Submit Videos to DARPA 93

Posted by timothy from the film-at-11-in-some-timezone dept.
doughnuthole writes "The deadline for DARPA Grand Challenge teams to submit their videos to DARPA just passed and some have posted them online. Some of the teams with these videos posted are Team Caltech, Axion Racing, Virginia Tech (on the Media page), Insight Racing, and UMass Dartmouth. The Grand Challenge is a 175 mile race run by fully autonomous vehicles. Since no teams completed the 2004 race, DARPA decided to run it again, this time for $2 million."
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DARPA Grand Challenge Teams Submit Videos to DARPA More

DARPA Grand Challenge Teams Submit Videos to DARPA

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  • Last Year was appalling... (Score:4, Informative)

    by tabkey12 ( 851759 ) on Sunday March 13, 2005 @07:06AM (#11925173) Homepage
    Remember this [newscientist.com] anyone? Not one of them even got close.

    Let's hope the extra money makes the difference this year.

    • Re:Last Year was appalling... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by doughnuthole ( 451165 ) on Sunday March 13, 2005 @07:52AM (#11925269)
      Last year teams had such a short period of time, it was difficult to write all the necessary software and spend the time necessary to test and refine. Now many teams have learned a lot from the previous race and have much more time to improve. Several are now able to drive fully-autonomously at speeds of up to 20 mps while still avoiding obsticles and following a path. The maximum speeds will continue to increase and bugs will continue to be routed out as teams gear up for the race.

      Most teams are not in it for the money, but for the sake of science and engineering. Some teams will spend close to that amount before all is said and done.

      • Re:Last Year was appalling... (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Most teams are not in it for the money, but for the sake of science and engineering.
        Me? I'm in it for the chicks.

    • Re:Last Year was appalling... (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Remember this anyone? Not one of them even got close.

      I had hopes for the DAD team. They have a simple and robust sensor suite.

      Their problem was they had to halt their vehicle to allow the officials to tow one of the challengers out of the way. And when they restarted, their front wheel was stuck on a rock. Their software wasn't smart enough to gun it and get over that small obstacle. Must have been frustrating not to be able to kick that damn rock out of the way. Up to then they were looking good.

  • If we can't make a land based car that will drive it self, how much longer do I have to wait for my flying car then?

    Seriously, I've put a good deal of thought into this, and it should be fairly simple to engineer a system that would drive your car during times that it would be appropriate to use a cruse control.
    • they have systems like this, it uses metal rods embedded in the road and sensors on the car to figure out where exactly in the lane it is.

    • Re:Just Great (Score:3, Informative)

      by AuMatar ( 183847 )
      The problem is figuring out when it needs to leave cruise control and slow down, speed up, avoid collisions, turn, etc. You know, the 99% of the time when you aren't on a straight, flat, open road with no traffic.
      • why is that a problem? use a simple graphics system to determine needed things, like other vehicles, edge of road, lanes, etc. use laser or radar to determin relative speed to other vehvicles. Simple modifications to the car for steering and speed control. I imagine I could do this for under $5k with off the shelf materials, and I'm not even a real engineer.

        like I said, considerable thought.
        • If you were a real engineer, you'd know it isn't that easy. How do you determine another car in front of you? Shape, color? Computers are NOT good at doing graphical pattern matching. Its non-trivial to recognize slow moving identical objects, much less fast moving objects of widely differing shapes and sizes (like a sedan and a big rig).

          Detect lane edges? How? You can't assume special equipment in the road to tell you, it doesn't exist yet (and could fail if it did). Look for patches of white lines
          • Okay, so I didn't say it was easy, it isn't trivial, but maybe that's the problem with "real engineers" is that the solution has become far more complex than it needs to be. Us engineering tech types (kind of like real engineers but get paid less) like to keep things simple.

            Let's look at how us human types drive. We basically determine what is road and non-road. More specifically, what is our lane and what is not-our lane. We keep our speed at the speed limit (in theory). We don't hit anything directl

    • Re:Just Great (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Flying cars and cruise control situations would, in reality, both be considerably aided by being in an electronic environment with constantly updated information from the road / flight path about the environment and changes in it, such as the fact that a blind corner/cloud is coming up, and there is a vehicle stationary out-of-site around it.

      What DARPA wants is a combat-ready system that can drive cross-country with little or no outside help.

      Different problems, and they require different solutions, and a

      • Re:Just Great (Score:5, Funny)

        by Glendale2x ( 210533 ) <[su.yeknomajnin] [ta] [todhsals]> on Sunday March 13, 2005 @08:19AM (#11925311) Homepage
        What DARPA wants is a combat-ready system that can drive cross-country with little or no outside help.

        Different problems, and they require different solutions, and a system that could pass the DARPA test would be overkill and unsuitable for the daily commute to work.

        I suppose that depends on what one considers a combat zone; dealing with "drivers" who are busy eating a bagel, reading the paper, drinking coffee, talking on a cell phone, shaving, and putting on makeup might require a combat-ready system.

    • Re:Just Great (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I think the big problem is one of cost and transisition. The most obvious solution is that the road and car talk to each other. However, this would mean that just upgrading the largest highways would be very expensive and take a long time. This would mean that there would be little benefit to those who own cars that are equipped with the ability to drive itself. A guess this is the whole chicken and egg problem.

      The other issue is what to do about oder cars not so equipped. In addition to the road and car t
    • Just forget it. Automotive control innovation is
      not going to be taking any leaps. The auto makers
      had enough trouble with anti-lock breaks.

      Thank the lawyers in congress and the trial lawyer
      association for this.
      • You are correct that the transition will be difficult but there is no question that the direction we are headed is for Robotic Drivers. Think back 100 years - the time of the Horseless Carriage - there were a total of 4,000 automobiles in 1905 on the surface of the earth - today we have over 250,000,000. Every minute of every day, two of these vehicles hit one another because of some stupid thing that a human driver does. We can remove the possibility of human error through the use of a robotic driver. Sure

  • I dunno (Score:4, Insightful)

    by OffTheLip ( 636691 ) on Sunday March 13, 2005 @07:13AM (#11925182)
    but where I live it seems most of the cars on the road are self driven. The person behind the wheel is usually taking care of more pressing things like chatting on the phone, eating, putting on makeup, etc.
  • I think this is pretty cool and all as an engineering effort, but what specific purpose does this have?

    I think that the government is secretly trying to create an army of autonomous pizza delivery drones. So long as you live in the desert, one of these few complex machines crafted by some of the world's best and brightest might get you your pizza within 30 minutes or less.
    • Now we know the real truth -- Dubya's regime is
      planning the roll-out of a chain of Pizza Huts
      in Iraq! No doubt that Halliburton will bill the
      US government high enough delivery charges to
      make up for the occassional road-side IED
      (Improvised Explosive Device) and missed delivery
      deadlines (free pizza with your next order).

      This does not bode well for a timely exit from
      Iraq (but of course we all suspected that anyway).
      • All we need to do in Iraq is put a Pizza Hut, 7-11, liquor store and strip club at every major intersection. The same plan would work in Afghanistan if there were any major intersections.
    • I think this is pretty cool and all as an engineering effort, but what specific purpose does this have?

      Autonomous dump trucks with carrying capacities of 100+ tonnes of ore have been in use in open pit mining operations for several years now. At the moment, it's complex and expensive to set up the control systems for them. More intelligent operation with lower start-up costs will definitely interest the big mining companies.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday March 13, 2005 @07:28AM (#11925217)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Would you look at that thing! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Sunday March 13, 2005 @07:32AM (#11925226)
    This thing [caltech.edu] is the SportsMobile from Team Caltech: just imagine the advances in science if Snoop Dogg had entered the DARPA Grand Challenge! Pimpin' hard but somebody's gotta do it I guess...

  • Team Aggie Spirit Video (Score:5, Interesting)

    by atrus ( 73476 ) <atrus.atrustrivalie@org> on Sunday March 13, 2005 @07:34AM (#11925230) Homepage
    As part of Team Aggie Spirit [teamaggiespirit.com], I'd figure I should share our video:

    http://www.stackworks.net/TASVCD.mpg [stackworks.net]

    It takes an amazing amount of work to get to even this stage, but we're making very fast progress.

    We're a new, entirely student run team with a very limited budget, and always looking for sponsors. If you know anyone who can provide money, equipment, supplies or other assitance, let us know!

  • How about a gigantic Roomba? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Dossy ( 130026 ) on Sunday March 13, 2005 @07:41AM (#11925249) Homepage Journal
    Interesting that the DARPA Challenge rule precludes hovercrafts from competing as they do not primarily use traction with the ground for propulsion.

    I hope a team enters with a very large metal hollow sphere with gear teethmarks lining the inside and the machinery be a shaft, gyroscope and gears on both ends of unequal weight. The rest of the contents can be fuel/energy cells to power the rotating motion of the machinery inside -- it essentially just has to "throw" itself in a direction and keep rolling and steering. Travelling 175 miles ought to be possible as long as the terrain isn't ridiculous.

  • Get them to chase each other (Score:5, Funny)

    by fruey ( 563914 ) on Sunday March 13, 2005 @07:45AM (#11925259) Homepage Journal
    As is well known in all film car chases, vehicles have a higher chance of survival (especially when wrecked beyond usual driveability) if they are being chased.

    A load of drone cars should be driven behind these competitors with models of druglords with machine guns, outlaws, corrupt police officers, and people to whom the teams own money.

    That way, they should be able to defy gravity enough to land from a great height at a mere 30 degrees to the horizontal without breaking their suspension or driveshafts, and continue to turn even after front side collisions which would leave bushes and pinions bent (or wheels set to cambers which would normally cause them to no longer turn). They might even get speed boosts beyond the maximum engineering speed expected for the motor, gas and gearbox actually installed.

    For an added bonus, they could have critically wounded people in the back, and an accomplice who absolutely has to jump out at 40mph somewhere mid course in order to continue some secret mission.

  • How do you kill people with a robot car? (Score:3, Funny)

    by bardothodal ( 864753 ) on Sunday March 13, 2005 @08:45AM (#11925359) Homepage Journal
    This is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. In case every forgot , their job is to kill people more efficiently. I seriously doubt any amount of money sunk into this will enable robots to kill more than humans on america's highways. What does the military need a robo-car for anyway?

  • We can't stop here, this is bat country! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I don't suppose DARPA could grow a funny bone and rename it the Thompson Memorial Challenge? They can't claim that it isn't a gonzo event.
    "Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only real cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas." Hunter S. Thompson

  • Cornell (Score:3, Informative)

    by NitsujTPU ( 19263 ) on Sunday March 13, 2005 @09:49AM (#11925574)
    I'm a member of the Cornell team. I've decided not to post our site, knowing that it would receive a brutal Slashdotting, but here are a couple of the off-site press releases.

    http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/041216/sfth012_1.htm l
    http://www.cornellsun.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2 005 /03/02/42255e9b352d0
    http://www.cornellsun.com/vn ews/display.v/ART/2005 /02/24/421d88d386293
    http://www.automotive.com/ne ws/25/7487/

    Feel free to Google us and come visit our site.
  • Who does DARPA think they're kidding, anyway? Add a zero or two, and you'll have the kind of money the DoD would hand to a defense contractor just to work on a problem like this, never mind with a deliverable that had to work. No sane defense contractor would promise such a thing, anyway.
  • Not Members only anymore. Heres a page with all of them. http://www.titaniumforums.com/torrent/torrentmain/ guest.php [titaniumforums.com] enjoy!
  • Carnegie Mellon's Red Team will be entering both Sandstorm [redteamracing.org](last year's entry) and H1ghlander [redteamracing.org].

  • 5% of the student body participated at Caltech ... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by __aadkms7016 ( 29860 ) on Sunday March 13, 2005 @02:01PM (#11926749)
    It's interesting, 50 undergrads took the course in 2003 at Caltech that did technology surveys for the vehicle, and there are about 1000 undergrads at Caltech total. So, 5% of the undergraduate population took part ...

  • Team Overbot video is on line (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Sunday March 13, 2005 @02:14PM (#11926825) Homepage
    Our Team Overbot video [overbot.com] is on line.

    One of our biggest problems in Silicon Valley has been finding a big open space in which to test. We now have access to a huge parking lot built during the dot-com boom, adjacent to an unfinished building complex. So we have the Overbot winding in and out among the parking islands. We'll be testing there today in a few hours.

    In terms of technology, Team DAD [digitalautodrive.com] probably is most innnovative. Everything runs on digital signal processors. They're building their own laser rangefinder this year. Last year, they got further than anybody else without wrecking. (CMU crashed three times; their HUMMV was able to survive the first two.)

    Nobody seems to have a breakthrough in sensing. (By this I mean sensing good enough to evaluate terrain. Detecting big, solid obstacles is trivial.) LIDAR line scanners are too limited, stereo vision doesn't register well on dirt, and strong intelligent vision processing requires a breakthrough that twenty years of research has failed to produce. The breakthrough needed is flash LIDAR, which exists, but wasn't ready soon enough for this year's Grand Challenge. (The rules prohibit the use of Government-funded patented technology not available for general sale by last August, and the good flash LIDAR wasn't available in time.) CMU has a LIDAR line scanner on a giant gimbal, and we have a LIDAR line scanner on an overly large tilt head, but that's an interim solution and a technical dead end.

    On the other hand, GPS and inertial gear gets better and cheaper every year. It's surprising how good it is.

    This year, everybody who makes it to the starting line should disappear over the horizon at the start. The minimal level of performance to make it through the "site visit" hurdle is above that demonstrated by most of the vehicles entered last year.

    And this year, DARPA is putting tank traps on the course.

  • Apparently Team Robo Monster [robomonster.com] is looking for programmers [robomonster.com] in the Los Angeles area. The team is headed by the guy from the noteworthy robots that jump [plyojump.com] blog. From their page:

    We are currently seeking additional team members with the following skills and/or resources:
    * Sensor integration
    * DSP programming
    * Gumstix hardware/programming
    * Autonomy/AI - CYC/DAML or other ontology-based programming experience
    * Game engine programming (for robotic simulation)
    * Desert racing/driving experi
    • Arggh. The "blink" tags result specifically from an obscure stylesheet declaration that happens only in firefox. Our video is posted at: http://www.robomonster.com/downloads.php (lower right links) We are definitely interested in programmers in Los Angeles. For this phase of the race (site visit) we need people most experienced in microprocessor programming and motor control. 1. For microprocessors we're looking for those experienced with 'hobby stamp' controllers, e.g. basic atom and BasicX BX-01. We're

  • Ripsaw (Score:3, Informative)

    by Saville ( 734690 ) on Sunday March 13, 2005 @04:40PM (#11927674)
    Don't forget the Ripsaw [howeandhowe.com] used by TeamTMT [howeandhowe.com]. Their vehicle looks much cooler, and more fun to drive, than the wimpy one from UMass Dartmouth [umassd.edu]. All they need to do is figure out that AI problem and they're done...
  • It's amazing that people still fall for DARPA's B.S., after last time when they changed the rules over 25 times and stil haf not admitted that they had changed the rules, after they ruled out my S-10 that was 25% race ready.

    It's too bad they don't have ANY integrity, and it's worse that /. is forgetful enough to cover their B.S. "race" that rules out 99% of the teams after promising the a spot.

    Andy Out!
  • Hey,
    I am Steve Jones of UBC Team Thunderbird. We are a Canadian team based out of the University of British Columbia. We have a very clear plan for how we are going to use Fuzzy Logic to deal with the unique challenges of this vehicle and are very actively implementing those plans at this time. We have been making an incredible amount of progress over the past few weeks as we have moved into the full implementation stage after a lot of planning. We are already well beyond what is visible in the Discover
  • Axion Racing is looking for talented software engineers. If you live in the San Diego area, and are interested in partipating in this historic race, please contact mdumas AT axionracing.com.

    Hope to see you at the race!
  • Well apparently team Simple Solution Inclusive had a much harder time of it.
    They have an amusing write up of theirs trials and tribulations (and electrical fires) in getting their video ready. http://ssinc.us/TooSimple.htm [ssinc.us]
    Maybe they should be called Team Murphy's Law
    KD

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