The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is sponsoring The Grand Challenge [nice modest title]. The rules are simple: Vehicles must cross 200 miles of rugged terrain between LA and Las Vegas in under 10 hours with no human assistance whatsoever. After turning their vehicles on, the teams simply sit back and watch. The first team to cross the finish line wins a cool $1 million.
That's nothing to sneeze at, but the real money, contestants said, comes with marketing the technology. Military applications are just the start, they said; robotic vehicles will radically change transportation. Commuting would be a snap. Rental cars could meet you at the airport door. Tractors would harvest crops on their own. If the technology works, that is. Not everyone expects someone to cross the finish line, because just reaching the starting line is a huge challenge. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency -- the gee-whiz Pentagon outfit that brought us the Internet, stealth bombers, "smart bombs" and a short-lived terrorism futures market -- has for 40 years dreamed of the day when robotic vehicles would wage war. It has thrown vast sums at defense contractors who, so far, haven't accomplished much. Despite recent strides in robotics -- small, remote-controlled robots are exploring caves in Afghanistan and clearing explosives in Iraq -- building an autonomous vehicle tough enough for battle has proved all but impossible. The biggest hurdle has been making vehicles see obstacles and react to them; the technology needed to do so is only now emerging. Disappointed by the slow pace and facing a congressional mandate that one- third of all Army ground combat vehicles be unmanned by 2015, DARPA decided to kick-start the research by inviting any scientist, engineer or gearhead with an idea to give it a try. The competition has attracted teams ranging from robotics powerhouse Carnegie Mellon University, which has budgeted $5 million for the task, to former NASA engineers to a pair of guys cobbling together a vehicle in their garage in St. Louis. The three Bay Area teams are just as eclectic. Dave Hall, 52, and his brother Bruce, 45, are robotics enthusiasts who made quite a splash a few years ago on "Robot Wars," televised gladiator-style bouts between remote- controlled robots. They call themselves Team Digital Auto Drive after the navigation system they developed for the Challenge. John Nagle, 55, is a retired software engineer from Redwood City who has three patents under his belt. He leads the 11 engineers and programmers who call themselves Team Overbot. And Anthony Levandowski is the 23-year-old UC Berkeley graduate who leads the Blue Team, a group of Cal students that has built a motorcycle that can balance on its own. Experts agree that the biggest challenge in building a robotic car is developing perception software that allows the vehicle to see the terrain, recognize obstacles and plot a course. DARPA won't disclose the exact route of the Grand Challenge until two hours before the race March 13; it has promised a rigorous route that will include rocks, gullies and streams. Another difficulty is getting so many complex systems -- the perception and navigation software, the motors that control the accelerator, brake and steering and so forth -- to work together. "It's very difficult to automate a piece of equipment and make it think and react like a human being would," said Daryl Davidson, executive director of the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems, whose 4,000 members worldwide build or use robotic vehicles. Source: SF Chronicle
