More toys. Literally!!
"Crashes and Traffic Jams in Military Test of Robotic Vehicles" by JOHN MARKOFF
VICTORVILLE, Calif., Nov. 4 — A Pentagon-sponsored robot race at a former Air Force base here on Saturday revealed that computer-controlled vehicles, at least to date, have failings that are all too human.
The contest, called the Grand Challenge and sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, featured both robot collisions and robot traffic jams. Yet the event also demonstrated that the state of the art in robotics has reached the point where the most sophisticated autonomous vehicles can now drive comfortably and safely on a city course while surrounded by traffic and other obstacles.
Like REMOTE-CONTROLLED PLANES, huh?
William L. Whittaker, a Carnegie Mellon University professor who pioneered the idea of contests to help advance robot technology during the 1980s: “It was a good day in robotland."
Like 9/11?
The Chevrolet Tahoe from Mr. Whittaker’s Tartan Team, sponsored by General Motors and others, won the top prize this year. Although the car finished just minutes behind a Volkswagen-sponsored Passat designed by a group of Stanford researchers, Darpa officials spent the night reviewing the cars’ performances during three separate missions, including how well they adhered to California’s driving rules.
On Sunday morning, they announced that the Carnegie Mellon car named Boss had won first prize ahead of Junior from Stanford and Victor Tango from Virginia Tech.
The event was the third in a series of races that have been held since 2004 to help meet a Congressional directive that requires the military to replace a third of its fleet of logistics vehicles with robots by the middle of the next decade.
This year’s race offered three prizes of $2 million, $1 million and $500,000 for the vehicles that were best able to navigate a 60-mile course in a simulated city in under six hours.
You didn't need that money though, American.
During the last week, the field of 35 invited contestants was narrowed to 11 finalists. They included several Volkswagen Passats, a Subaru, a Chevrolet Tahoe, a Toyota Prius, a Land Rover, a Ford Escape Hybrid, and an oversize Marine Corps transport vehicle made by Oshkosh.
Norman Whitaker, the Darpa project manager for the event, told the more than 300 reporters attending the race that the vehicles, once started, would perform tasks as varied as left-hand turns across oncoming traffic and pulling in and out of narrow parking spaces, all without human intervention:
“We’ve been looking at the problem of protecting people on the battlefield. There’s no animal or midget inside controlling it or anything else.”
Does that mean it will do the actual fighting, too?!
To the casual bystander, the stream of robots left a disquieting impression as each vehicle drove by with both drivers and passengers conspicuously absent as steering wheels twitched back and forth.
Christine!!!!
Michael Montemerlo, a Stanford roboticist who headed the programming effort of the Passat that finished the course first:
“It’s amazing how quickly you acclimatize to the idea of robot driving in cities.”
Each vehicle is a complex ensemble of sensors and computers that are programmed to follow roads, avoid oncoming traffic, merge, pass and occasionally even cheat on the rules to get out of difficult situations.
In addition to the prize money, the event, which has been held every 18 months, cost $20.5 million to produce this year. However, the organizers described it as an economical way to bring about rapid technological progress in a field that is a military priority.
That's $20 more million you didn't need for bridges, roads, you name it, Amurkns!
Mr. Whitaker also said that the program was having a Sputnik-like impact in the engineering and computer science departments of many universities, where enrollments have jumped in response. During the contest, which began at 8 a.m. Saturday, it quickly became apparent that there were disparities in the abilities of the vehicles.
Early in the race, a Land Rover designed by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had a near collision and then a real collision with a Passat built by a team of researchers based in Braunschweig, Germany. The German team was later pulled from the race by officials.
Separately, the Oshkosh military vehicle was withdrawn after it had to be halted just inches from colliding with a pillar. A short time later, the car entered by a team from the University of Central Florida ended its race by running into an abandoned building."
Still gotta get some of the kinks, I guess!
