Re: DARPA Grand Challenge

"Lewis Mammel"
> Brian Dean wrote:
>> Would I do it again? Not a competition exactly like that, but maybe
>> something similar in that it is in a field that is of interest to me
>> and the nature of the event is interesting itself. The GC was
>> interesting in part because it was so crazy to think anyone could
>> create a fully autonomous ground vehicle that could successfully
>> navigate 140 miles through an unknown rugged off-road region at useful
>> speeds. That had never been done before, which was part of its appeal
>> to me.
>
> I think this characterization is a little misleading, considering
> the precisely specified GPS course laid out. GPS was really the
> sine qua non of the whole venture.
<snip>


Much has been said here lately on this subject. I agree that GPS was one of
the most utilized sensors in the competition, but so it was last year and
results were very different (although I also agree that this year the route
was a little bit simpler than last year's). For the sake of robotics field,
it would be nice to see vehicles with more intelligent vision systems, and I
deeply believe that the real intelligence is in vision.

But look at the two other points of view:

1) DARPA has a very concrete goal in mind. Given a convoy of trucks that
must deliver supplies from Bagda to Basra, make the trucks completely
autonomous. GPS will most likely be available (and military GPS is less
succeptible to jamming), aerial photography will most likely be available
(and military aerial photography has much better resolution than the ones
available to CMU or any other team for example). Roads will probably be even
better that the ones we saw at the GC. So, in DARPA's point of view the
event was really a success. For us half assed scientists (or the eventual
full assed ones 8^) ) it was not enough. Of course I wanted to see a course
with mud, snow, climbs, descents, forests and what not... but I don't think
that's really pragmatic.

2) Although human vision system still cannot be compared with machine
vision, for a course like the GC, we would also need a GPS or at least a
map. Although most of navigation was done using GPS, there was collision
avoidance present in all vehicles, and we were able to see a demonstration
of it on the NQE.

Writing this second view, one question raised on my mind. I believe that
according to the course DARPA chose, it was possible to two vehicles to be
on the same road on opposite directions. How road sharing was managed when
vehicles were about to cross each other? If such thing happened and both
vehicles were allowed to be in movement, I take my hat out for them. Such
capability is fundamental for real world autonomous navigation.

Padu


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