Re: DARPA Grand Challenge

Padu wrote:

> "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.

I wonder about the utility of autonomous truck convoys to the military
though. For the foreseeable future they're still going to need human
guards of some kind. I think the utility for an autonomous device would be
more in the nature of a recon or weapons delivery platform--something that
goes in harm's way in lieu of a human.
>
> Padu

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--John
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