Comments on: Drive, Stanley, Drive

By: paul

paul — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 20:01:05 +0000

The federal government has tried on at least two occasions that I can think of to limit the DARPA (aka ARPA) role in not-explicitly-military research. In about 1970 this clobbered a bunch of university computer-science research, with the rather surprising result of fostering a bunch of long-term R&D at various high-tech companies that had effective monopolies and hence money to burn. In the 80s, the reining-in of DARPA made a significant contribution to AI Winter, wiped out a bunch of research into interesting parallel computer architectures, and led to the development of several (for a time) highly successful wall street quant firms.

Strange tricks history plays.

By: me2i81

me2i81 — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 16:32:01 +0000

Artifical Intelligence research was for years kept afloat by the military’s burning desire for killer robots. They eventually had to settle for shoot-by-wire. The Grand Challenge is all about moving technology along to the point where autonomous transport vehicles could be bidded out for contract. TerraMax finished in twice the time as the rest of the finishers, but did it with a vehicle that could actually transport something.

By: Maynard Handley

Maynard Handley — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 07:49:29 +0000

DARPA provides both good and bad because DARPA is basically the MITI, the (high-tech) industrial planning department of the US govt. America being populated by the certifiably insane, the fiction has to be maintained that the US govt does not do such things, and that DARPA is purely in the business of killing people ever more efficiently.
I imagine one day, just as the Republicans have begun so much of the other nonsense they spout, they will look at DARPA, conclude that it really ought to be only in the killing people business, and the US will lose one more of the various props that kept it a going concern.

By: Happy Expat

Happy Expat — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 00:30:37 +0000

Looks like Stanley won. Congratulations! Good thing UC Davis didn’t enter a vehicle …

By: Ruchira Datta

Ruchira Datta — Sun, 09 Oct 2005 03:13:59 +0000

What’s up with this Gray Insurance Company team, which also seems to have been one of the few to finish? Anyone heard of them before?

By: Kieran Healy

Kieran Healy — Sun, 09 Oct 2005 02:37:04 +0000

This better not be a sneaky way to make sure that the Red Team win, is all I’m saying. Stanley rules.

By: Brackdurf

Brackdurf — Sat, 08 Oct 2005 23:22:02 +0000

Correction—there seems to be an issue with counting in time when the robots were “paused” to prevent passing each other… No official word on the winner, and the hard thing seems to be both subtracting the pause times, and taking into account the cost of time to accelerate back to speed (which depends on the number of pauses, not just to total paused time). Who would ever think a robot race would descend into technicalities…

By: Darcy

Darcy — Sat, 08 Oct 2005 23:03:35 +0000

I’m at CMU, and I’m a Stanleyite, too. There’s something unsatisfying rooting for a team that has the largest financial backing and years of practice in the challenge.

By: Brackdurf

Brackdurf — Sat, 08 Oct 2005 22:58:25 +0000

Well then, you’re in luck, as by my guess, around 5:00 est, Stanley was the unofficial winner (it was my favorite too). I think Stanley actually passed at least one of the Red Team trucks along the way. Oddly, the three lead cars—the two Red Team trucks and Stanley—seemed to be all within about five minutes of each other (they start staggered, but those were the first three starters, I believe). The odd thing about following the race on the clever though slightly convoluted grandchallenge.org flash site is that I kept thinking, dang it, Red Teams 1 and 2, go a little faster! You’re only a couple minutes behind the lead, with millions of dollars on the line. Can’t you just speed it up a bit and take a few risks?! But of course the robots can’t see each other, and can’t (yet) do that extra little spurt that makes human (or horse) competition so fun to watch, and so much more likely to end up with a photo finish.