No-Winner Robot Race

Palomar · 2004-03-13 16:07:57

[http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u … _2004mar13]Click

*They all broke down. Geez!

--Cindy

::EDIT:: Another report of the same story is cleverly entitled: "Robot Race is Giant Step for Unmanned Kind" :laugh:

Byron · 2004-03-13 16:12:28

[http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u … _2004mar13]Click
*They all broke down. Geez!
--Cindy
::EDIT:: Another report of the same story is cleverly entitled: "Robot Race is Giant Step for Unmanned Kind" :laugh:

Yeah, tell me about it... ??? Maybe they'll have better luck next year...lol.

Guess the field of robotics still has a long ways to go, huh?...

B

Palomar · 2004-03-13 16:19:16

Guess the field of robotics still has a long ways to go, huh?...
B

*Well, not that I'm greatly knowledgeable about robots (because I'm not), but I am surprised it turned out this way. But one of them did go 7 miles, and thus apparently almost made it.

That's good, I suppose.

--Cindy

Byron · 2004-03-13 16:26:44

That's good, I suppose.
--Cindy

I wouldn't tell that to the owner of that particular robot vehicle...hehe...it might have been close, but still no cigar....

Oh well...there's always next time, I suppose...

B

Palomar · 2004-03-13 16:30:50

I wouldn't tell that to the owner of that particular robot vehicle...hehe...it might have been close, but still no cigar....

*Yep, I see your point.

Why do I get the feeling robot races will be a favored sport of Marsians (particularly the early Marsians)?

Better brew up a batch of that Red Lager to go with! (But count me out...I'll watch the races with my homemade ROOT beer, thanks).

--Cindy

Mad Grad Student · 2004-03-13 23:12:31

But one of them did go 7 miles, and thus apparently almost made it.

Well, not quite. The race was actually over 200 miles, but CMU was still closer to that than anyone else. The guys you really want to feel sorry for are people like the Blue Team. They were trying a very unconventional approach, a motorcycle, and just couldn't get it to go more than 50 feet without crashing.

(Puts on Cubs' hat) Well, there's always next year.

Rxke · 2004-03-14 02:00:55

Ok, it looks pathetic, but in fact it is not. Not at all.

I clearly remember DARPA built something similar in the mid-eighties... A *big* vehicule, that had problems taying on-course on a asphalted, nearly straight road...
Every 2-3 metres (say 10foot) it had to pause to do it's calculations, took minutes, and sure enough, it was *not* capable to stay on that wide, clearly marked road...

Today, some uni's were set to the task, and after a *very* short building time, some of them succeeded in building stuff that managed to negociate very rough and difficult terrain... Seven miles does look pathetic, but What if darpa had made the race a more realistic 10 miles long? A lot of people would've thought this race an outstanding succes...

It was called Grand Challenge, i'd call it Insane Challenge. For a first try, this was just asking waaaaaaaaaaay too much.

And remember, this stuff is prototyping, most failures were hardware, 'stupid' things like brakes hanging etc... As someone on /. pointed out: "In WW1 the first tank could only go a thousand yards before breaking down..."
I predict most of the teams will already be figuring out what went wrong, and improve their designs... It might be a totally different race next year...

Rxke · 2004-03-14 02:13:53

BTW To give you an idea how far we got already... In Europe there's a BMW drivin around on the highways, purely driven by computer... Even during rush-hour. Of course, there's a programmer with a kill-switch in the shotgun-seat, but he almost never got to use it...

DARPA's challenge was rough terrain negociation, a whole different ball-park, and most people predicted none of them would get past the first 100 metres, some did 70 times better than that, impressive indeed!

dicktice · 2004-03-14 10:49:09

I wonder if a "hover mode" (to cope with water, or rocks, for instance) would have been allowed . . . or "hopping" or "rolling" modes, for that matter? Seems to me the real breakthrough ideas for meeting this challenge are still waiting in the wings. . . .

Josh Cryer · 2004-03-14 11:12:24

My brother wanted me to enter this last summer when I told him my basic idea for a vehicle design. After writing up a proposal, and subsequently having it rejected, I gave up on it. My plan was actually... quite... different, from every thing out there. I actually had the motorcycle engine I was going to use in storage, so I was basically 1/3rd of the way there (even had a dealer for minigryoscopes and a laser range finders; and heck, Mini-ITX was giving away free PCs with RAM!).

Think gerbil ball mixed with a blowfish and a jumping bean.

I'm glad I didn't tweak my design to fit their "specifications" (which, BTW, changed every other damn week; the whole "safety system" was such crap it wasn't even funny; they forced you to basically build an autonomous SUV), because in the end, they rejected several hundred people who wanted to get in.

I would've invested the whole summer/fall/winter working on it though. Would've been an interesting challenge.

Rxke · 2004-03-14 11:33:11

Yes, the Darpa regulations were a jole, but i believe there are other competitions in the making, mainly organised by disgruntled teams that got a 'no' for stupid reasons...

Now it looked like only Red Team was he one they actually favoured, judging from comments, they changed rules so often you had to be really lucky to still 'fit'... or to be in the red team (ok, probably conspiracy theory, but...)

Josh Cryer · 2004-03-14 13:14:53

Yeah, I read about one of those new competitions which came about right when DARPA killed off 100 or so of the potential competitors. Unfortunately, though, they don't have the incentive of a $1 million prize; I could've built my vehicle for easily less than $10k, total (not including the time out of work). Not a bad investment for a good shot at $1 million.

And I think it could've worked. I mean, for example, I saw an interview yesterday with one of the teams who died early on. They pointed out that they were essentially "cheating." No actual "driving" was going on, they merely pointed the vehicle in a direction, and followed the GPS signal, sending out sonar/ladar/laser signals to determine if there were obsticles or not in front of them. So I think that everyone knew that was the only way to achieve this, and that's what I was planning to do, I just thought up a way to create something which was stable; a ball isn't going to flip over.

Its only weakness was mud, theoretically.

SpaceNut · 2005-02-11 09:08:35

Carnegie Mellon seems up to the challenge for the darpa competition.

Carnegie Mellon's Red Team Seeks $2 Million Robot Racing Prize

Carnegie Mellon University's Red Team has entered two driverless Hummers in the DARPA Grand Challenge, a 175-mile, winner-take-all desert race for robots, scheduled to take place Oct. 8, 2005. The first machine to reach the finish line within 10 hours wins a prize of $2 million. There is no second place.

Darpa grand challenge
other darpa threads for the AI robotic rover

DARPA Grand Challenge Ever hear about it? Comments?

Darpa the gamble on technology high risk per dollar or just unobtainium

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#1 2004-03-13 16:07:57

Re: No-Winner Robot Race

#2 2004-03-13 16:12:28

Re: No-Winner Robot Race

#3 2004-03-13 16:19:16

Re: No-Winner Robot Race

#4 2004-03-13 16:26:44

Re: No-Winner Robot Race

#5 2004-03-13 16:30:50

Re: No-Winner Robot Race

#6 2004-03-13 23:12:31

Re: No-Winner Robot Race

#7 2004-03-14 02:00:55

Re: No-Winner Robot Race

#8 2004-03-14 02:13:53

Re: No-Winner Robot Race

#9 2004-03-14 10:49:09

Re: No-Winner Robot Race

#10 2004-03-14 11:12:24

Re: No-Winner Robot Race

#11 2004-03-14 11:33:11

Re: No-Winner Robot Race

#12 2004-03-14 13:14:53

Re: No-Winner Robot Race

#13 2005-02-11 09:08:35

Re: No-Winner Robot Race

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