Darpa - Grand Challenge III

There at it again, the first one failed, and the second one was a big success with several vehicles going all 132 miles of rugged terrain...This time around Darpa’s thinking Urban.

This time around, [DARPA Grand Challenge] autonomous vehicles would run a simulated military supply mission in a mock urban area. To succeed, the vehicles would have to complete a 60-mile course safely in less than six hours, obeying traffic laws and avoiding obstacles while they merge with moving traffic, negotiate intersections and even pull into and back out of parking spaces...

The race is set for November 3, 2007...mark your calendars.
I liked the last one, pbs did a great in depth show on it a few weeks back...it well pretty interesting. This one will be pretty hard it seems...to dodge obstacles and abide by traffic laws...if this is a success, unmanned convoys will likely happen...probably within this decade.

It's On: Grand Challenge 3

Nice, it looks like the popular science magazine was right on about the upcoming robots. This should prove interesting, automaton urban logistics train. Better have full time air cover, that is an expensive supply for the E to target.

I don't think I'll get any coverage or info on it over, anyone know if they'll have video on the net at some point? Or if they have vids of last one?

Was looking into potential competitors and found these guys along with the studies being done. Now if this group is not on the DARPA list, I'll be very disappointed, considering the areas of research and this fact;
'A story about the DARPA Grand Challenge (which included a CIMAR robot called NaviGATOR) was on the Daily Planet on October 14, 2005.

The Machine Intelligence Laboratory (MIL) provides a synergistic environment dedicated to the study and development of intelligent, autonomous robots...
Applications of MIL research include underwater unmanned vehicles, humanoid robots, autonomous land vehicles, swarm robots, Micro-Air Vehicles (MAVs), direct brain-machine interfaces (BMIs), and autonomous household robots.

This is who I would bet on, if such an activity was legal of course.
www.mil.ufl.edu...

I'm sure a lot of the same people will be back on the scene...it should be fun to watch.

My vote is on Crusher, and since its allready built, and works great, they just need to get there code writers to start with the traffic related items...like stop signs and red lights.

I wonder if they will have moving obstacles in this challenge...like other cars, people, and the occasional ball bouning onto the street.

These devices are soon to be ubiquitous I fear. I do not dislike the technology and find the "Challenge" a worthwhile pursuit. The Carnegie-Mellon "Crusher" wed with these new "urban" specs would be formidable (think the "trucks" in Soilent Green).

One day maybe there'll be a different sort of DARPA Challenge - one where human teams "hunt" and "kill" such devices, reprogram them and send them back against their original masters - reality TV for the last half of the 21st century?

Seriously though, such autonomic and tele-operated vehicles/devices present some serious ethical and philosophical/moral issues when they are intended for use within any proximity to live humans whether in an urban city or open battlefield. Very powerful capabilities and "hive-mind" autonomous goal-seeking hardware and software already exist and are "off the shelf" components in the security biz, much of it open-source/modified for ATV's. A company from Ottawa or Kanata ON CA I believe.

At some point a "line" will have to be drawn in regard to "ethical" use of such devices and those devices deemed beyond the "line" would somehow require policing and policy. Now that'd be a cool job; "robot-fighter" - think Steve Irwin crossed with Kevin Mitnick.

Thanx for the link,

Victor K.

PS. I'll be "rooting" for the team who does the most with the least in GCIII - I think we'll be impressed even more than GCII.

I liked the last one, pbs did a great in depth show on it a few weeks back

You can watch it online here.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I have an idea for Darpa Grand Challenge 4. Here it goes.

Instead of simulating missions and stuff like that, why not go to the extreme, like say a NASCAR event in one of their tracks with all of the cars doing their thing all at the same time? It would be fun to watch and would give us lots of information of high speed manuevering in a packed hiway. Maybe they could also have different competitions within the challenge, like a swarming competition where all the cars are connected in a hive mind to keep the speed up as high as possible in a very tight pack. I know they've been looking into this for UAV's and the like, I would like to see them do a similiar thing for these things.

[edit on 26-5-2006 by sardion2000]

How about a script similar to one of the popular automotive video games... with a NASCAR stage, a rally stage and maybe a "stuck in traffic stage ". November should be fun... I'm pullin' for Stanford or the Mellon-heads. Any one with advanced word on "the undisclosed competition site"? A CBC link.

Victor K.

38'