Another Step Towards the Driverless Car 224
jtogel writes "At Essex, we have for some time been working on automatically learning how to race cars in simulation. It turns out that a combination of evolutionary algorithms and neural networks can learn how to beat all humans in racing games, and also come up with some quite interesting, novel behaviours, which might one day make their way into commercial racing games. While this is simulation, the race is now on for the real thing — we are setting up a competition for AI developers, where the goal is to win a race between model cars on real tracks. As the cars will be around half a meter long, the cost of participating will be a fraction of that for the famous DARPA Grand Challenge, whereas the challenges will be similar in terms of computer vision and AI."
Not just for older drivers (Score:3, Interesting)
Lower insurance premiums - and if the car has an fender bender, I can point to the manufacturer and hopefully won't be branded as an unsafe driver for life if I didn't do the driving. Safer roads for all. A recent study (posted on
http://www.localnewswatch.com/skyvalley/stories/i
We'd be more safe.
No traffic tickets - the AI can go closer to the speed limit than I have the patience to (now if they didn't consistently set the speed limit too low in a ton of places just to be asshats and be able to write tickets when they need the money....)
Seriously, this isn't just for the elderly. Driving ceased to be fun for me long ago. If I had to do it only once a week on a nice stretch of fast highway, I might feel differently....
Where are the Competition Specifications? (Score:2, Interesting)
The competition sounds like a manageable project for academics (versus the DARPA event).
Is the competition still in the vapor-ware or maybe-someday stage?
Anyone have a link (perhaps IEEE) that has details?
I would love one (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Forza 2 (Score:5, Interesting)
We have ourselves gotten player modelling working fine with evolutionary neural networks, which can generalize, but the Forza team didn't consider these techniques reliable and fast enough in time for the release of the original game. Maybe things have changed with Forza 2.
There is some information on the Forza AI on http://research.microsoft.com/mlp/forza/ [microsoft.com], and our approach to modelling is described in http://julian.togelius.com/Togelius2006Making.pdf [togelius.com]
Note that all this is about modelling behaviour, not about creating new behaviour from scratch; there are some papers on this on my website [togelius.com] as well.
Traffic (Score:3, Interesting)
Safety vs. Freedom , again. (Score:5, Interesting)
Now this, to me, is a very important distiction. What if for this to work well, all the cars have to be computer controlled? What if computer control is then mandated? This is a whole new exciting level of "nanny government". Sure this might be safer in that there would be fewer auto accidents, but do you really want all transportation to be centrally controlled? Sure each car might be autonomous at first, but emergency workers need the ability to remotely turn on off, right? It's for everyone's safety.
The problem isn't in the technology (Score:3, Interesting)
Many manufacturers have been dissuaded from pursuing the technology and installing in their vehicles because in the case of any accident the corporation would be liable. Obviously the 'driver' wouldn't be at fault because they wouldn't be driving.
No large corporation is going to put itself in line to pay out on every bump, scrape and minor slaying caused when their killer robo-cars Attack!
Re:And try this against a real racer (Score:2, Interesting)
A boringly smooth road track with an entirely predictable car, like most F1 tracks and cars are becoming, would be the ideal combination for these algorithms. No one passes anyway, so maintaining position until a perfect pit stop occurs is the way to get ahead. Good pit in and out laps win races nowadays. This is where perfection in an algorithm could possibly win, whereas NASCAR is too noisy an environment for it to work.
That being said, I don't watch NASCAR (much), and I am an F1 junkie.
Hamilton is very likely the F1 version of Tiger Woods.
tom
Re:Traffic (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Safety vs. Freedom , again. (Score:3, Interesting)
Some of the challenges to having this would be making sure all the systems can inter operate with every other manufacturer, Putting some sort of traffic control system in place other then regular streetlight and stop signs, and embedding some sort of positioning system that is more accurate then GPS. (remember that darpa challenge entry who was disabled by a drop in the GPS signaling over some sort of correction)
I think we are a long way from using them in mass on the open road.
wow, what country are you writing from? (Score:3, Interesting)