Grand Challenge will not be shown on Wide World of Sports
 

The future of space exploration is autonomous vehicles - robots. We have not even begun to understand or build such machines. For example, farm equipment does about 1 billion miles every year - unfortunately still requiring human drivers. This Saturday, 13 Mar, DARPA will conduct a contest among 20 'supercomputers on wheels'. A race called "Grand Challenge" from Barstow CA to Las Vegas - 250 miles in less than 10 hours. Each robot must at that time learn of and make the journey by visiting 1000 waypoints, transversing rivers, and travelling up to 60 MPH - all without any human intervention. The prize is $1million - which really does not cover the cost of these vehicles. But mankind marches on. This is was makes jobs, wealth, growth, eliminates recessions, advances technology, etc. (Nonsense tax cuts and other MBA inspired 'solutions' only undermine all these advances in the long term).

The contest has been in the planning and development stage for years - and yet hardly reported by junk news services such as the local Action News or Daily News. Niether can even bother to report why a conventional vehicle crash happened. One would think they might report high tech vehicles crashes. But no hype in that - no blood.

Carnegie Mellon outfitted a Hummer using a four way Intel Itanium parallel processor and three Xeon processor system. Steering uses by-wire system (electrical steering). SciAutonics LLC uses a PowerPC based vehicle control system, three ruggedized laptops, and an industrial computer all connected by ethernet bus. These to handle inputs from navigation, ultrasound sensors, and infrared laser detection systems. Systems will use GPS for navigation. But that means at best, an update at 5 hz - far too long for point by point navigation. These vehicles must discover how to get from point A to point B, then use GPS to discover where vehicle is located, then plan a route from point B to point C - all this repeated many times to only get from the first waypoint to second (of 1000) waypoints.

Its not difficult for a human to see a tree, know it for what it is, and go around it. Very difficult for an automonous vehicle to make the same discovery and associated route plan. Virgina Tech is using a four wheel drive utility cart with computers from National Instrument, a radar, an optical laser range finder, differential GPS, and a conventional light camera.

So who will carry this sporting event live?

250 miles in 10 hours? Of course no one is going to show it live; it's BORING. For the participants, it's intervals of boredom punctuated by intervals of anxiety (sort of like war only with lower stakes) but for spectators, it's just plain boring.

It'll be on the Discovery Channel in 3 months, though, right?

When I was at CMU, I'd occasionally see the earlier incarnations of the autonomous vehicle by the robotics building. At that point, it was a military box truck, and, I think, a minivan.

Boeing has a big stake in sandstorm.

And golf is exciting?

Certainly by comparison.

We're rooting for Pete's company.

I have to agree with tw on this. the geek in me has a virtual woodie. this beats the bejeezus out of baseball, golf, nascar, and figure skating combined. it would be better if they added a slpash of a "robot wars" type element, but if they spent $3mil on just one robot, i can see why they wouldn't.

not that i'd be glued to my tv for 10 hours, but i would definately make time to watch the highlight show.

The apocalypse is coming...

scary, huh?

I caught tw agreeing with Radar as well... strange times brothers, strange times.

'Well...back to the old drawing board..."
 

shoulda used a jeep