Grand Challenge - Autonomous Ground Vehicles

[neps]

Found a link to this, thought it was pretty interesting. The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in 2002 announced that it would give $1 million to the team that builds an autonomous robotic ground vehicle that wins a race from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. This event is set to happen March 13 of this year.

Challenge vehicles must autonomously traverse the challenge route without human interface or control of any kind. The vehicles must perform general route selection and navigation to follow the Challenge route. Vehicles must sense their environment to perceive terrain features, ground conditions, obstacles, and other Challenge vehicles. They must intelligently control their speed and direction so as to avoid or accommodate all of the above. And they must do these things quickly- overall speed will be the deciding factor and the time limit is designed to push vehicle speeds far beyond current technologies.

So basically it seems like KITTs sub systems in the making.

A motorcycle based concept with images and video can be found at http://www.ghostriderrobot.com/


More on the Event: http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/

Other teams: http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/teams.htm

[KnightRider2000]

It's Heat Vision and Jack! LOL!


-KnighRider2000

[KARR Engineer]

But those vehicles will NEVER be as good as KITT!

KARR:Or me, for that matter.

KARR, I think I told You not to but in! This forum has SKAR, not KARR...

[KnightRider2000]

True, so true.


-KnightRider2000

[neps]

But this wasn't a question of it being better than KITT. They aren't even trying to be better than KITT. KITT is fiction, sci-fi fantasy, these vechicles are a reality. They contain one of the features that will bring us closer to having KITT as more than fantasy. Its interesting to see these baby steps towards creating a reality, and they shouldn't be so easily swept aside simply because it isn't as cool yet as the fiction is.

[Nexus]

This is a bit unusual for DARPA. Can't wait till March 13!

The motorcycle concept you linked to seems like a bold approach...what happens if it tips?!

[KARR Engineer]

Robotic arms? You never know what they come up with!

[jup]

Heh...take alook at the projected versions of the Ghostrider Robot under Pictures. Looks like some sort of "familiar" scanner equipment to me...

[neps]

You should take a look at some of their videos, they have stability tests. I think it's a bit risky to do a two wheel project because you have an element to deal with that the others don't. The videos they have looks neat, but the bike spends alot of time balancing when driving cause it keeps teetering back and forth.

[KARR Engineer]

I think a quad would be better instead of the bike.

[kido]

The bikebot needs more speed to controll the bike,or give it some training wheels.

[Knight Storm]

True. I read why those chose a bike though. And I quote

Single track (two wheel) vehicles cost less, are more efficient and can traverse more extreme environments because they only have conform to the terrain in one axis.

For these reasons, two wheeled vehicle are the second most common means of locomotion for humans, second only to walking!

I think it makes sense a bit more dangerous but sense.

[neps]

While cleaning out some of the old messages, I came to this post by Michael Pajaro about this very event:

http://bb.knightrideronline.com/viewtopic.php?t=2600