Truck race anyone?

No one behind the wheel
No one on the remote control

straitstimes.asia1.com.sg...

In Pentagon 'future war' project, robotic vehicles compete in 320km desert race for US$1m prize

FONTANA (California) - The last time Mr Jim Radford and his friends took their bizarrely customised pickup truck for a late-night test drive, police cars swarmed them.



This is cool you can go to the site and download the truck tracking system watch the whole race.

www.grandchallenge.org...




Another dollop of controversy has been dished out on DARPA's $1million Grand Challenge robot race with an early version of the planned route for the contest leaking onto the Web.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has posted the Grand Challenge race map as part of a safety review process ahead of the DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) event, which is scheduled to be run in early March. DARPA originally told competitors that the course would not be revealed to competitors until two hours before the start of the race. This secrecy was meant to make life tougher on competitors prepping robot vehicles for the contest and to mimic real world conditions.

Some competitors have already started charging that an early glimpse at the map gives certain racers an unfair advantage. Those teams that were relying on detailed early mapping for their vehicles will now have a very solid idea of what to expect. DARPA, however, argues that the release of the map was not a leak at all. Instead, the map, which shows a number of possible routes, still leaves much to the imagination.

"Part of the environmental review process was to make the map public for comment," said DARPA spokeswoman Jan Walker. "It was not a premature thing. The maps show a thousand or more miles of possible routes."

theregister.com...

'Think about it. Our brains are 1,000 times better than a computer and it takes us about 16 years to learn how to drive a car. To get a vehicle to make all the same decisions we do when we drive is extremely difficult.' LAT-WP




[Edited on 12-3-2004 by SpittinCobra]


[Edited on 12-3-2004 by SpittinCobra]

yea, pretty interesting

heres a link to a nice and easy to read articles with plenty of pics


www6.tomshardware.com...

Originally posted by prevx
yea, pretty interesting

heres a link to a nice and easy to read articles with plenty of pics


www6.tomshardware.com...

Thanks for the great link. I would be fun the build a RC truck to win a million.

The race ended early when all robotic entrants broke down. Too bad.

news.yahoo.com.../washpost/20040313/tc_washpost/a55628_2004mar13