Eleven Finalists in Pentagon's Robotic Rally 64
An anonymous reader writes "A mere 11 driverless vehicles — not the 20 originally planned — will compete in this weekend's $3.5 million all-robot street rally, hosted by the Pentagon. After a series of crashes, dangerous turns, and aimless wanderings off of the course, the rest of the robo-cars in the "Urban Challenge" were deemed unsafe to compete."
Re:GPS + Humans are not better (Score:1, Insightful)
Counterintuitive (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Drivers' tests and Pentagon competitions (Score:3, Insightful)
One of my uncles was a contractor in Angola during the civil war and he nearly went to jail for dangerous driving after coming back.
Apparently many anti-tank mines have a delayed fuse so that they blow up under the middle of the tank. If you drive at 70mph+ it blows up behind you. After 3 years of working down there he was having a panic attack every time his speed dropped under 50.
Frankly if they can get away with reprogramming without having to undergo therapy they are very lucky.
Re:Well, the tech is not there yet (Score:2, Insightful)
Friend of mine is competing in this... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Anyway - I heard Wed. that they were out of the competition - more-or-less arbitrarily. It sounds to me like DARPA already knew, going in to this, who they wanted the finalists to be. Stanford (the previous winner), CMU, Oshkosh - they're all there.
Last time DARPA basically did the same thing to Team Jefferson. They just said "you guys are done" when they showed up to re-try a test -- after they'd spent 30+ hours doing energency repairs after hitting a barrier. I'm getting the distinct impression they don't want anybody small in this thing. TJ has spent a fraction of the other teams' development costs and for some reason that scares DARPA.
55% Were safe to drive (Score:3, Insightful)
Kind of like an Emergency Vehicle? (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, I hate it when those damn Ambulances, Fire Engines, and Police Cruisers just tear through the neighborhood with their sirens blaring and those damn lights flashing. Where do they get off driving ninety miles an hour, ignoring stop signs, refusing to yield the right of way, and cutting off pedestrian traffic?
How dare they! I mean, it isn't like anyone's life is on the line, right?