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[DPRG] Crashes and Traffic Jams in Military Test of Robotic Vehicles
Subject: [DPRG] Crashes and Traffic Jams in Military Test of Robotic Vehicles
From: Kipton Moravec
kip at kdream.com
Date: Mon Nov 5 07:12:37 CST 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/05/technology/05robot.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin
November 5, 2007
NY Times
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.
“It was a good day in robotland,” said William L. Whittaker, a Carnegie
Mellon University professor who pioneered the idea of contests to help
advance robot technology during the 1980s.
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.
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.
“We’ve been looking at the problem of protecting people on the
battlefield,” said Norman Whitaker, the Darpa project manager for the
event. He 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.
“There’s no animal or midget inside controlling it or anything else,” he
said.
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.
“It’s amazing how quickly you acclimatize to the idea of robot driving
in cities,” said Michael Montemerlo, a Stanford roboticist who headed
the programming effort of the Passat that finished the course first.
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.
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.
--
Kipton Moravec KE5NGX
"Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
--Mark Twain
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