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Robo-Cars Take Next Step, Standardized Communications With JAUS
After proving unmanned ground vehicles could do things all on their own in the DARPA Grand Challenge and then following up with the Urban Challenge it was time to start talking the same language. SAE has standardized the communications protocols for umanned vehicles and has given it a sexy name to boot — Joint Architecture for Unmanned Vehicles or JAUS, see, sexy. Anyway, it's basically a method which allows one unmanned vehicle to talk to another about situational conditions, location, direction, payload, and other pertinent informationMore »
novelties
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TARDEC Opposed Piston Opposed Cylinder 2-Cycle Diesel Engine
Talk about a gee-whiz motor, TARDEC is showing off its Opposed Piston Opposed Cylinder Engine (OPOC) here at the 2008 SAE World Congress and we were impressed enough to take a couple of minutes to find out more. The engine is the result of a DARPA initiative to shrink the overall powertrain package in ground vehicle military applications. The horizontally opposed, twin bore four piston engine is an evolution of the shared bored opposed crank concept developed by the Nazis and swiped by the Russians for tank applications. This particular unit, while far from production ready, is capable of 320 HP, redlines around 3800 RPM. and tips the scales at only 380 lbs.More »
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Toyota Grand Prix To Feature DARPA Race
The Toyota Grand Prix, slated for April 18 - 20, will feature more than
novelties
Crusher UGV Eats Cars, Needs No Driver
DARPA and Carnegie Mellon have been dumping money in the Crusher UGV and rightly so. This beast of a machine is fully autonomous, meaning it needs no driver. It will navigate between two GPS waypoints and uses advanced sensors to detect the best route to get there. The video suggests that the sensors are also capable of finding the nearest run down cars to plow through and crush. Now that is what I'm talking about! A fully autonomous monster-car rally. [BotJunkie]
news
Technology isn't truly accepted until the weatherman for the Today show gives it his okay (remember when Willard Scott chose the VHS over the BetaMax, thus sealing the fate of that device?). Al Roker has turned his sites on the DARPA Challenge Winning Carnegie Mellon Chevy, which chauffeured him around a track without ending his life. His only complaint was the short stopping, but we think R2TRUCK2 was just making a move on the suddenly sveltier Roker.
Al Roker Goes For A Ride In Driverless Car, Still Waiting For Elasticless Pants
Technology isn't truly accepted until the weatherman for the Today show gives it his okay (remember when Willard Scott chose the VHS over the BetaMax, thus sealing the fate of that device?). Al Roker has turned his sites on the DARPA Challenge Winning Carnegie Mellon Chevy, which chauffeured him around a track without ending his life. His only complaint was the short stopping, but we think R2TRUCK2 was just making a move on the suddenly sveltier Roker.
hoon of the day
Although the DARPA Grand Challenge has already declared a winner and we've even done a wrap-up post already — we felt the need to run this week-old video of the Axion "Spirit" racing vehicle taking a left turn directly into one of the human-driven Ford Taurus chase vehicles. Yes, This may be our first non-human Hoon of the Day, but with all our DARPA coverage from the past week or two, we felt it necessary to welcome rather than discriminate against our new robotic driving overlords. [via Gizmodo]
DARPA Robot Car Crashes Into Ford Taurus
Although the DARPA Grand Challenge has already declared a winner and we've even done a wrap-up post already — we felt the need to run this week-old video of the Axion "Spirit" racing vehicle taking a left turn directly into one of the human-driven Ford Taurus chase vehicles. Yes, This may be our first non-human Hoon of the Day, but with all our DARPA coverage from the past week or two, we felt it necessary to welcome rather than discriminate against our new robotic driving overlords. [via Gizmodo]
darpa grand challenge
DARPA Grand Challenge: Wrap-Up
After criticizing MIT's bot for overtaking Cornell's car when it got confused by a barrier and causing a minor bumper brushing, it's come to my attention no points were deducted from either team. In fact, no teams were penalized for traffic infractions of any sort, and the final scoring came down to finish times. MIT managed to come in first place of the teams that didn't win spots on the podium, and that's pretty impressive for a squad conspicuously absent from previous races. MIT's bot, with its extensive array of sensors and custom-build hardware running around 100,000 lines of code written just for the event, was the most geek-tastic of the event. Even though they had 16 out of 40 cores running vision processing from their optical cameras, they still had a little trouble navigating the dirt road portion of the course. Unfortunately, apart from MIT's fourth place win, DARPA will not be providing final scores for the rest of the pack. Happy future defense contracting to all!
DARPA Grand Challenge Round-up
darpa grand challenge
After all points were tallied, Carnegie Mellon's Tartan Racing was the winner of this year's DARPA Grand Challenge. In second place was Stanford, with Virginia Tech in third. As podium finishers, the teams will receive $2 million, $1 million and $500,000, respectively. Currently, there are no plans for a fourth challenge, and murmurings from DARPA staff are that autonomous-vehicle development has reached a point such that it no longer needs seed money to flourish and evolve further. Hopefully they're wrong though, because the Grand Challenge a great event and tremendous motivation for public imagination. Maybe the teams will just bathe in Cristal tonight.
DARPA Grand Challenge: And the Winner Is...
After all points were tallied, Carnegie Mellon's Tartan Racing was the winner of this year's DARPA Grand Challenge. In second place was Stanford, with Virginia Tech in third. As podium finishers, the teams will receive $2 million, $1 million and $500,000, respectively. Currently, there are no plans for a fourth challenge, and murmurings from DARPA staff are that autonomous-vehicle development has reached a point such that it no longer needs seed money to flourish and evolve further. Hopefully they're wrong though, because the Grand Challenge a great event and tremendous motivation for public imagination. Maybe the teams will just bathe in Cristal tonight.
darpa grand challenge
I'd been interested in Team LUX from the first time I saw their car in person. That's why I was really hoping to see them in the final race. Unlike some other teams, they stuck around for the finals after being disqualified a few days ago. Turns out they were eliminated because their car was unable to navigate on the dirt portion of the track. Without lane markers or any obvious edges to follow, the car simply didn't know what to do. They also had some technical issues. Their car died once during qualifying, but nobody knew whether it was a car problem, a computer glitch or the kill relay system. Also, in a very unlucky move, the car went kamikaze on DARPA's Dr. Tether's chase vehicle. While the Team-LUX members are confident a collision would not have happened — after all that's their specialty — the good ol' Doc was less optimistic and ordered the kill command be sent. No team knows their scores or the final nail in the coffin of their disqualification, so it's hard to say for sure, but in the end, the dirt road portion of the course would have killed 'em anyway.
DARPA Grand Challenge: Team LUX's Lament
I'd been interested in Team LUX from the first time I saw their car in person. That's why I was really hoping to see them in the final race. Unlike some other teams, they stuck around for the finals after being disqualified a few days ago. Turns out they were eliminated because their car was unable to navigate on the dirt portion of the track. Without lane markers or any obvious edges to follow, the car simply didn't know what to do. They also had some technical issues. Their car died once during qualifying, but nobody knew whether it was a car problem, a computer glitch or the kill relay system. Also, in a very unlucky move, the car went kamikaze on DARPA's Dr. Tether's chase vehicle. While the Team-LUX members are confident a collision would not have happened — after all that's their specialty — the good ol' Doc was less optimistic and ordered the kill command be sent. No team knows their scores or the final nail in the coffin of their disqualification, so it's hard to say for sure, but in the end, the dirt road portion of the course would have killed 'em anyway.
darpa grand challenge
Out here on the urban challenge course in Victorville, California, it's UPenn, MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Virginia Tech and Cornell out of the original 11 left in the DARPA Grand Challenge. Of these, all said teams' autonomous vehicles have completed mission two as of 1:05 pm PT, with Cornell the final team to finish. All the cars are racing on the same course, but each has a unique mission plugged into it, meaning they have to interface with each other as well as a team professional drivers behind the wheel of several stunt Ford Tauruses. (More after the jump.)
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DARPA Grand Challenge: Update from the Course
Out here on the urban challenge course in Victorville, California, it's UPenn, MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Virginia Tech and Cornell out of the original 11 left in the DARPA Grand Challenge. Of these, all said teams' autonomous vehicles have completed mission two as of 1:05 pm PT, with Cornell the final team to finish. All the cars are racing on the same course, but each has a unique mission plugged into it, meaning they have to interface with each other as well as a team professional drivers behind the wheel of several stunt Ford Tauruses. (More after the jump.)
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darpa grand challenge
Three-and-a-half million in prizes is a pretty big deal, and this year, the DARPA Grand Challenge will be webcast live on Saturday, Nov 3 starting at 6:00 am (PT). The event is free for anyone willing to brave a trip to Victorville, California, a Mojave desert town 81 miles northeast of Los Angeles. With 35 semifinalist teams competing, the easiest way to split them up is by whether they're primarily corporate or collegiate, which gets a little tough because there is a fair amount of crossover. What the corporate vehicles seem to have in common is an interest in actually being able to deliver their product to the end user, whereas the college teams seem more interested in trying things out that may not even be necessary. Installs seem to be pretty clean and sensor arrays are relatively modest. One team breaks away from this stereotype: Team Axion's car features gobs of hot glue, a PS3 to run the rear motion cameras, and windshield wipers for their cameras up front. They're also the only team to have brought the same vehicle back for each challenge. Insight Racing is another team with an interesting to look at vehicle: a Lotus with several MacMini's serving as its brain. It seems like only a few teams
really understand the value of a sexy platform in generating interest. More »
DARPA Grand Challenge: Corporate vs. Collegiate
Three-and-a-half million in prizes is a pretty big deal, and this year, the DARPA Grand Challenge will be webcast live on Saturday, Nov 3 starting at 6:00 am (PT). The event is free for anyone willing to brave a trip to Victorville, California, a Mojave desert town 81 miles northeast of Los Angeles. With 35 semifinalist teams competing, the easiest way to split them up is by whether they're primarily corporate or collegiate, which gets a little tough because there is a fair amount of crossover. What the corporate vehicles seem to have in common is an interest in actually being able to deliver their product to the end user, whereas the college teams seem more interested in trying things out that may not even be necessary. Installs seem to be pretty clean and sensor arrays are relatively modest. One team breaks away from this stereotype: Team Axion's car features gobs of hot glue, a PS3 to run the rear motion cameras, and windshield wipers for their cameras up front. They're also the only team to have brought the same vehicle back for each challenge. Insight Racing is another team with an interesting to look at vehicle: a Lotus with several MacMini's serving as its brain. It seems like only a few teamsreally understand the value of a sexy platform in generating interest. More »
darpa grand challenge
More than a year ago, DARPA awarded 11 teams $1 million each in seed money for vehicle R&D. Of the 60 applicants, Stanford, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Autonomous Solutions, Virginia Polytechnic, CalTech, Cornell, The Golem Group, Honeywell, Raytheon and OshKosh were the only ones with proposals deemed worthy of the prize. So, what's a million dollars get ya these days? Anything from a mostly stock Toyota Highlander Hybrid to a gigantanormous robotic monster truck that belches Terminator sounds when in autonomous mode. Every team has a unique approach, and while similar hardware shows up on many of the vehicles, nobody seems to have the exact combination to match anyone else. Case in point. Last year's winner thinks it can get the job done without any optical cameras; Autonomous Solutions figures Windows XP is up to the task of commanding an SUV. Things are bound to get interesting on the A Track, and we're not even to the privately funded B Track entrants. [DARPA Grand Challenge]
DARPA Grand Challenge: Million-Dollar Babies
More than a year ago, DARPA awarded 11 teams $1 million each in seed money for vehicle R&D. Of the 60 applicants, Stanford, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Autonomous Solutions, Virginia Polytechnic, CalTech, Cornell, The Golem Group, Honeywell, Raytheon and OshKosh were the only ones with proposals deemed worthy of the prize. So, what's a million dollars get ya these days? Anything from a mostly stock Toyota Highlander Hybrid to a gigantanormous robotic monster truck that belches Terminator sounds when in autonomous mode. Every team has a unique approach, and while similar hardware shows up on many of the vehicles, nobody seems to have the exact combination to match anyone else. Case in point. Last year's winner thinks it can get the job done without any optical cameras; Autonomous Solutions figures Windows XP is up to the task of commanding an SUV. Things are bound to get interesting on the A Track, and we're not even to the privately funded B Track entrants. [DARPA Grand Challenge]
darpa grand challenge
[Jalopnik's desert stringer Curtis Walker is following the DARPA Grand Challenge, an annual race of autonomous ground vehicles, with a serious case of the techies. We'll have his reports today on the National Qualifying Event semifinals, like this one, as soon as he can type them into his digital audio-visual receipt and transmission unit. - ed.] Among the numerous newcomers to this year's DARPA competition, Massachusetts Institute of Technology seems poised to win the imaginary award for most gizmotastically outfitted. Armed with a cool million in seed money for development, team MIT went all out with the sensors and CPUs. All told, they've got 11 Sick Lidars (Light Detection and Ranging) units, five optical cameras, 15 Delphi long-range radars, GPS and a 40-core supercomputer to run them. All this power comes at a price in the form of electricity required and heat generated. To address this, they installed a 6kW generator and a 2kW roof mounted AC unit. Perhaps even more impressive is that the 100,000 or so lines of code running on the system were all written for this event. [Next: Team Lux, and gallery.]
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DARPA Grand Challenge: A Battle of Wits
[Jalopnik's desert stringer Curtis Walker is following the DARPA Grand Challenge, an annual race of autonomous ground vehicles, with a serious case of the techies. We'll have his reports today on the National Qualifying Event semifinals, like this one, as soon as he can type them into his digital audio-visual receipt and transmission unit. - ed.] Among the numerous newcomers to this year's DARPA competition, Massachusetts Institute of Technology seems poised to win the imaginary award for most gizmotastically outfitted. Armed with a cool million in seed money for development, team MIT went all out with the sensors and CPUs. All told, they've got 11 Sick Lidars (Light Detection and Ranging) units, five optical cameras, 15 Delphi long-range radars, GPS and a 40-core supercomputer to run them. All this power comes at a price in the form of electricity required and heat generated. To address this, they installed a 6kW generator and a 2kW roof mounted AC unit. Perhaps even more impressive is that the 100,000 or so lines of code running on the system were all written for this event. [Next: Team Lux, and gallery.]
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automation
The Oshkosh TerraMax unmanned truck hasn't quite rocked the DARPA Grand Challenge in the past, so the company has a lot to prove this year in Victorville, California, where the grand spectacle of mecha robots takes place later this month (we'll be there). That means the company has a lot to prove, considering it wants a piece of the US defense budget atop a congressional mandate stating one in three ground combat vehicles must be self-driving by 2015. The maker of airport firetrucks and other large industrial vehicles has invested tens of millions of dollars in the project, and says the TerraMax is competitive this year, with lasers, high-tech camera gear and global positioning systems to guide it through the punishing desert course without wandering off into a cactus-filled netherland. We'll see. [Yahoo!]
Terramax Prepares for Driverless Takeoff
The Oshkosh TerraMax unmanned truck hasn't quite rocked the DARPA Grand Challenge in the past, so the company has a lot to prove this year in Victorville, California, where the grand spectacle of mecha robots takes place later this month (we'll be there). That means the company has a lot to prove, considering it wants a piece of the US defense budget atop a congressional mandate stating one in three ground combat vehicles must be self-driving by 2015. The maker of airport firetrucks and other large industrial vehicles has invested tens of millions of dollars in the project, and says the TerraMax is competitive this year, with lasers, high-tech camera gear and global positioning systems to guide it through the punishing desert course without wandering off into a cactus-filled netherland. We'll see. [Yahoo!]
news
DARPA Driverless Volkswagen Passat Is A Hit In London
November's the target date for the next DARPA Challenge, but it's not stopping some of the teams from trying to snag some publicity in the interim. The next Challenge, an urban city course, is drawing less of the "utility vehicles" than the off-road challenge. That's why VW's showing off at the London Science Museum what they think is the right vehicle for the contest — a Passat 2.0 TDI we've shown you before. But now we know some of the technical details of the Passat including that it'll be using"two eye-like laser sensors in the front and one in the back that scan road conditions, buildings other vehicles and pedestrians over a range of up to 200 metres (650 feet)...an on-board computer digests and acts on the information..."Finally, a Passat with laser beams on their frickin' heads! More »
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Stanford Takes the Message to the Streets, DARPA-Style
One may recall Stanley, the robo-Touareg that won the 2nd DARPA Grand Challenge. Well, now the boffins in Paly are working a successor to the SUV, based on a Passat known as Junior. Junior's designed to navigate an urban environment, rather than a desert off-road course. DARPA plans to announce the location of the next race, to be held November 3rd, sometime in October. Meanwhile we're still waiting for information on the atomic-powered Saab 96 entry from Venture Industries. More »
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