ROBO-​​RACE MAP LEAKED; DARPA EVENT NOW “POINTLESS?”

Darpa’s million-​​dollar robot rally, sched­uled for March, may have been fatally com­pro­mised over the hol­i­day break.
The whole point of the “Grand Challenge” was that the drone rac­ers had to wind their way from Los Angeles to Las Vegas on their own. The Global Hawk, Predator, and other so-​​called “autonomous vehi­cles” today maneu­ver only with a ton of help from human oper­a­tors. Flesh-​​and-​​blood pilots either give the drones pre-​​programmed paths to fol­low, or they remote-​​control the robots using a joy­stick.
In con­trast, the Grand Challengers could have no con­tact while their mechan­i­cal cre­ations raced. And nobody, absolutely nobody, was sup­posed to know the route before­hand. Otherwise, it could have just been coded into the drone’s mem­ory.
But now, Mobile Robotics notes, the routes have leaked online. The local office of the Bureau of Land Management put on their web­site all the paths being con­sid­ered. And some of the robot-​​makers are pissed.
“This makes the Grand Challenge point­less. It’s not about autonomous vehi­cles any more. It’s about pre­pro­grammed ones,” one fumed on a Grand Challenge mes­sage board.
No, no, Darpa spokesper­son Jan Walker tells the Register. “The maps show a thou­sand or more miles of pos­si­ble routes.” Everything’s still kosher; the drone rac­ers won’t know exactly where to go.
Maybe. But, accord­ing to the Register, a “Los Angeles-​​based com­pany (is) offer­ing to over­fly the course with laser map­ping and pho­to­graphic equip­ment. The infor­ma­tion will be go up for sale to the Grand Challenge teams.“
Exactly how those teams were picked gen­er­ated con­tro­versy. Originally, the Grand Challenge was an open event. Then, sud­denly, the field was nar­rowed to twenty teams after some robot-​​builders had spent tens of thou­sands of dol­lars, and count­less hours, on their rac­ers.
In response, a com­pet­ing LA-​​to-​​Sin City drone rally was started. It’s sched­uled for September. The pre­cise path the robots will take hasn’t been revealed yet.

January 6th, 2004 | Drones | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.