Post #146,031
3/13/04 5:41:16 PM
|
Nobody won the $1M DARPA prize for autonomous desert race.
[link|http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55628-2004Mar13.html|Washington Post]: BARSTOW, CALIF., March 13 -- The Pentagon-sponsored robot race held in Southern California today ended without a winner, as none of the autonomous vehicles built by the 15 qualifying teams was able to travel farther than 7 miles from the starting line.
The odds-on favorite to win the race blew an engine after it traveled just seven miles from the starting line. Most of the other vehicles competing for a $1 million prize in the Pentagon's "Grand Challenge" failed to travel more than a few hundred yards from the starting point near Barstow, Calif.
[...]
In sponsoring today's race, DARPA is responding to a congressional mandate that one-third of U.S. military operational ground combat vehicles by unmanned by 2015. For example, robotic vehicles one day could run supply routes, eliminating the threat to drivers and security personnel assigned to vehicle convoys.
The agency spent $13 million on the race. It estimates competitors laid out four to five times that amount developing their entries, which rely on global positioning satellites as well as a variety of sensors, lasers, radar and cameras to orient themselves and detect and avoid obstacles.
[...]
With no winner in today's race, DARPA said the $1 million prize money will roll over to another event in 2006. Hey, Fu! Are you going to try? :-) Cheers, Scott.
|
Post #146,035
3/13/04 6:28:14 PM
|
Where's marlowe when {something} needs his robotic skillz?
And.. it's safe enough a venue, too - only rattlesnakes of the non-biped form to deal with mano a mano. Er - maybe let the robot handle that risk, too.
Why with all that hyperbolic experience.. maybe he could even resurrect the Turbo Encabulator, with Remote-destruct capabilities.
Hmmm - can he escape the coming Draft.. with All That Talent?
..dusts off 78 of Geo. M. Cohan doin Over There, convert to .wav, as zIWE smartly salutes it's first Conscript, his wireless soldering iron in its smart new leather holster, matching the hastily sewed-on epaulets and shoulder patch:
They Also Serve Who Only Stand And SoldierSolder
{sniff}
|
Post #146,038
3/13/04 6:53:17 PM
|
Most of the serious 'bot builders did with TerraHawk
#13 at: [link|http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/media/qid_results5.pdf|http://www.darpa.mil.../qid_results5.pdf]
..not sure why they withdrew. I'll update you when I talk to my friend Dan.
I was one of the original authors of VB, and *I* wouldn't use VB for a text
processing program. :-) Michael Geary, on comp.lang.python
|
Post #158,041
6/1/04 10:01:26 PM
|
IEEE Spectrum story on the challenge in 6/2004 issue.
[link|http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature/jun04/0604dar.html|Here]. If Sandstorm is the odds-on favorite, then the GhostRider, an autonomous motorcycle, is the vehicle most likely to fail. Even its creator, Anthony Levandowski, a 23-year-old mechanical engineering graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, thinks so. Spotting some supporters in the bleachers, he tells them to watch the GhostRider make its test run the next morning: "It'll be the only one that crashes without hitting anything!"
The idea behind the bike's steering is that it's constantly falling but correcting itself before it hits the ground, its front tire wobbling back and forth as if in the hands of a first-grader just learning to ride. To date, the farthest the bike has traveled is about 180 meters. But never mind that: Levandowski has a vision. He sees a low-slung, carbon-fiber two-wheeled motorbike that can traverse terrain quickly, efficiently, and surreptitiously. In five years' time, he promises, he'll be able to build such a machine. Listening to him talk, you want to believe. Nothing like flouting conventional wisdom. :-) DARPA should fund more things like this to get people to tackle new challenges. Cheers, Scott.
|
Post #158,043
6/1/04 10:29:49 PM
|
You want a new challenge? :)
[link|http://www.servomagazine.com/tetsujin2004/|http://www.servomaga...com/tetsujin2004/]
|
Post #158,046
6/1/04 10:42:00 PM
|
Sheesh! Only 13 days left to enter. Better get crackin'!
:-)
Neat!
DARPA should be an incubator and a technology driver. Challenges should be part of the picture, and maybe a bigger part than they've played in the past.
Another story in the June Spectrum magazine (not online unfortunately) covers the attempt to build a 403 GFlop supercomputer at [link|http://www.flashmobcomputing.org/|"FlashMob 1"]. They "only" made it 180 GFlops (depending on how you count success on Linpack).
Cheers,
Scott.
|
