Innovations from a Robot Rally (DARPA) to take an unconventional approac

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=000000A3-4BCC-13A8-8BCC83414B7F0000

Innovations from a Robot Rally

This year's Grand Challenge competition sputted advances in laser sensing, computer vision and autonomous navigation-not to mention a thrilling race for the $2-million prize
By W. Wayt Gibbs


The most valuable and complex component in a modern vehicle typically is also the most unreliable part of the system. Driving accidents usually have both a human cause and a human victim. To certain engineers--especially those who build robots--that is a problem with an obvious solution: replace the easily distracted, readily fatigued driver with an ever attentive, never tiring machine.
The U.S. military, which has been losing soldiers to roadside bombs in Iraq for several years, is particularly keen on this idea. But by 2002 more than a decade of military-funded research on autonomous ground vehicles had produced only a few slow and clumsy prototypes.

So that year the Pentagon authorized its Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to take an unconventional approach: a public competition with a $1-million prize. The next February DARPA director Anthony J. Tether announced that the Grand Challenge--the first long-distance race for driverless vehicles--would be held in the Mojave Desert in March 2004. When no robot completed that course, DARPA doubled the prize and scheduled a second running, through a different part of the desert, for October 2005.
The point of the Grand Challenge was not to produce a robot that the military could move directly to mass production, Tether says. The aim was to energize the engineering community to tackle the many problems that must be solved before vehicles can pilot themselves safely at high speed over unfamiliar terrain. "Our job is to take the technical excuse off the table, so people can no longer say it can't be done," Tether explained at the qualifying event held 10 days before the October 8 race.

Clearly, it can be done--and done in more than one way. This time five auton­omous vehicles crossed the finish line, four of them navigating the 132-mile course in well under the 10 hours required to be eligible for the cash prize.

More important than the race itself are the innovations that have been developed by Grand Challenge teams, including some whose robots failed to finish or even to qualify for the race. These inventions provide building blocks for a qualitatively new class of ground vehicles that can carry goods, plow fields, dig mines, haul dirt, explore distant worlds--and, yes, fight battles--with little or no human intervention.


"The potential here is enormous," insists Sebastian Thrun, director of Stanford University's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and also head of its robot racing team. "Autonomous vehicles will be as important as the Internet."


http://news.com.com/Yahoo+hires+DARPA+director+to+head+research/2100-1030_3-5996430.html

Yahoo hires DARPA director to head research

By Elinor Mills
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Published: December 15, 2005, 6:02 AM PST

update Yahoo has opened an East Coast research center and hired an artificial intelligence expert and former director at the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to open research centers in other countries.

Ron Brachman, 56, was named vice president of worldwide research operations, the Internet giant said Thursday.

Ron Brachman,
Yahoo VPThe new research center in New York City will initially focus on media, microeconomics and e-commerce to help understand "how people get together and do things in markets (and) auctions, (how they) exchange goods and services, and how large groups of people have macroeconomic behaviors," Brachman said.

Brachman previously served as the director of DARPA's Information Processing Technology Office.

In his new position, Brachman said he will research data-mining and how to make computer systems adaptive over time. "Recommendations made by online services--understanding similarities between interests and how to recommend things to people--have underlying (artificial intelligence) technology," he said.

Artificial intelligence can also be used to help fight fraud and help improve targeted advertising, he said. "We can use expert rules and Bayesian reasoning to understand when transactions may be fraudulent," Brachman said.

Before joining DARPA in 2002, Brachman was a research vice president at AT&T Labs, where he developed an artificial intelligence team. He also served as president of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. He received a bachelor's degree from Princeton University and a master's degree and doctorate from Harvard University.

[pocket]

1. and in a couple of years, those machines willl be kill people

machines are even less likely to feel a twinge of concience than the current crop of human killbots we have in service right now

[0rganism]

2. ED-209 lives!

"Please put down your weapon. You have 20 seconds to comply."

[AndyTiedye]

3. More Likely Use is in Hazmat or Radiation-Contaminated Areas

Robots are too expensive, too fragile, too unreliable and too stupid
to use as soldiers or policemen.

[bpilgrim]

4. welcome to the future...

http://news.globalfreepress.com/movs/robocop/robocop.480.360.mp4

peace

[seriousstan]

5. cute video, but I liked Star Wars better.

[Nictuku]

6. Spooky

I just read a sci-fi novel "Forever Peace" by Joe Haldeman, which was about futuristic warfare done by 'soldierboys', remotely controlled by mind-linked humans.

DARPA was mentioned a lot in this novel. Spooky.

The 'Enders' (we would call them Rapturists I guess), radical religious folks were in a race to end the universe.

Spooky.

[daleo]

7. There are places where the Pentagon considers human life cheap

Especially non-U.S. human life. So, if an unreliable and/or stupid robot killed non-combatants, that would just be waved away as collateral damage. The point about expense is still valid, but it may not be long before the price comes down.

The use of robots would certainly make colonial adventures more palatable to the American population (less U.S. troops killed). I fear that would be mighty tempting to the current leadership, and perhaps many future administrations. It is an ugly prospect.

[Trillo]

9. Disagree. The contempt which is shown to the poor and

disadvantaged in our society is proof the the U.S. doesn't care about U.S. human life. Now perhaps the PTB care about a small fraction of it, but that's a different matter.

[daleo]

10. Well, you've got me there.

New Orleans made that perfectly clear.

[bemildred]

8. The usual technical blind spot.

Humans are easily the most sophisticated and reliable part of the vehicle, and we likely will continue to be so for a long time yet.

And they are fun to manufacture.