The car's on its own in this desert dash
From a stripped down humvee with radar and GPS to a motorbike called Ghostrider kept upright by a gyroscope, the US military aims to kick-start robot vehicle research.
Ian Sample
Thursday March 4, 2004
The Guardian
It could be the most extraordinary race ever held. Next week, a hotch-potch of off-road cars, trucks, golf carts and maybe even the odd motorbike will battle it out in a mad dash across the hazardous terrain of the Mojave desert. The incentive is simple: the first to cross the finishing line within 10 hours wins
The car's on its own in this desert dash
From a stripped down humvee with radar and GPS to a motorbike called Ghostrider kept upright by a gyroscope, the US military aims to kick-start robot vehicle research.
Ian Sample
Thursday March 4, 2004
The Guardian
It could be the most extraordinary race ever held. Next week, a hotch-potch of off-road cars, trucks, golf carts and maybe even the odd motorbike will battle it out in a mad dash across the hazardous terrain of the Mojave desert. The incentive is simple: the first to cross the finishing line within 10 hours wins $1m (£536,000). But there's a catch: none of the vehicles will have a driver.
It may resemble a real life version of the Wacky Races, but there's a serious point to the race of the machines. Dreamed up by the Pentagon's defence advanced research projects agency (Darpa), the Grand Challenge, as the competition is known, is seen as a way to kick-start research into unmanned vehicles. The US military believes that robotic vehicles capable of finding their way from A to B using only onboard sensors and computers, could one day be sent into battle, to ferry supplies and carry out reconnaissance. Congress expects as much, requesting that by 2015 one-third of all army ground vehicles be unmanned.
Darpa doesn't usually opt for such wacky measures to develop the military technology of tomorrow. But concerned at the lack of headway being made by the usual defence contractors, the agency decided to lay down the gauntlet to all US citizensin the hope of attracting fresh thinking. Out of 86 teams to apply, about 20 will turn up for a qualifying round this Sunday at the speedway track in Fontana, California. Once there, the teams must demonstrate that their vehicles can get around without human intervention, avoiding obstacles as they go. Those that succeed will then be eligible to enter the race proper, a week on Saturday.
Darpa is keeping details of the race route secret for now. All they have disclosed is that it will be largely off-road, beginning in Barstow, California, and finishing some 200 or so miles away in the town of Primm, just across the Nevada border. On the way, the robotic vehicles can expect to encounter mountains and gulleys, cliffs and ditches, hairpins and boulders. As if the natural hazards won't be tough enough, Darpa has some obstacles of its own it will scatter along the course. "It's a difficult challenge. There are so many things that could happen," says Scott Gray, spokesman for Carnegie Mellon University's Red team.
Final details of the race course will be given to each team on a CD just 2 hours before the race starts. The CD will contain GPS coordinates of about 1,000 waypoints defining the course. To avoid disqualification, each vehicle in the race must not only hit each waypoint, but stay within set "corridors" between them. Vehicles that stray off course will immediately be shut down by chase cars following close behind or by helicopters watching the race from above.
The contest has attracted teams whose members range from school children and garden-shed robot enthusiasts to off-road racers and engineers at the country's top robotics institutes. The Red team at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute is one of the most experienced, and arguably favourite to win. Led by William "Red" Whittaker, who has previously sent robots into Three Mile island and Chernobyl, the team have stripped down a surplus US military humvee and kitted it out with stereo cameras, radar, laser scanners and GPS receivers. Onboard computers will hold in their memory satellite images of the local terrain, which the vehicle can use with GPS data to work out if it is close to hidden dangers, such as a cliff over the brow of a hill it is hurtling up. The radar and laser scanners will pick up any obstacles, such as boulders or other vehicles, in the way.
Darpa has expressly forbidden the use of Wacky Races tactics that might scupper the chances of the other contestants. The robotic vehicles are not allowed to carry weapons and must tackle obstacles by going round them, rather than squashing them or batting them out of the way.
In tests, the Red team's vehicle, Sandstorm, has reached speeds in excess of 70mph. "We like to think we've got a good chance of winning. We've certainly put in the work to make it successful," says Gray. "But you never know what will happen. It could rain, which might short-circuit the electronics. Or a vehicle right next to us could go off course and bump us out," he added.
At the University of California, Berkeley, Anthony Levandowski and his team are taking a completely different approach to the Grand Challenge. Instead of taking the easy route and modifying a car, they are entering a motorbike. "We thought about what is the best way to get across rough terrain, and the answer is a motorbike," says Levandowski. "The only problem is motorbikes have this big problem in that they just won't stand up by themselves."
The team have spent the best part of a year developing gyroscopes and other technologies for keeping the bike upright. It works, but only just. The eery result, a bike with no rider, has aptly been named Ghostrider.
Levandowski admits his team have made life tough for themselves, but says their plan was always to try something nobody else would consider. "If we fail, at least we tried to do something innovative, something that's never been done before."
The remaining entries are mostly converted army vehicles or four-wheel drive cars, with the exception of TerraMax, a giant six-wheeler built by a team at Ohio State University.
As the teams work around the clock to get their contraptions ready to race, final preparations are taking place along the race track too. While Darpa officials add more obstacles to the course, a team of biologists have been dispatched to "sweep" the route for endangered desert tortoises that might get squished on race day. Any likely looking burrows are being penned in for the day to stop the tortoises wandering out into the mayhem.
Despite the effort that has been put into getting the different vehicles ready in time, many engineers secretly admit they don't fancy their chances of finishing the course, let alone winning. One engineer was convinced at least one car would meet its fate at the bottom of a cliff. "Let's just hope the video cameras are running when that happens," he says.
m (£536,000). But there's a catch: none of the vehicles will have a driver.
It may resemble a real life version of the Wacky Races, but there's a serious point to the race of the machines. Dreamed up by the Pentagon's defence advanced research projects agency (Darpa), the Grand Challenge, as the competition is known, is seen as a way to kick-start research into unmanned vehicles. The US military believes that robotic vehicles capable of finding their way from A to B using only onboard sensors and computers, could one day be sent into battle, to ferry supplies and carry out reconnaissance. Congress expects as much, requesting that by 2015 one-third of all army ground vehicles be unmanned.
Darpa doesn't usually opt for such wacky measures to develop the military technology of tomorrow. But concerned at the lack of headway being made by the usual defence contractors, the agency decided to lay down the gauntlet to all US citizensin the hope of attracting fresh thinking. Out of 86 teams to apply, about 20 will turn up for a qualifying round this Sunday at the speedway track in Fontana, California. Once there, the teams must demonstrate that their vehicles can get around without human intervention, avoiding obstacles as they go. Those that succeed will then be eligible to enter the race proper, a week on Saturday.
Darpa is keeping details of the race route secret for now. All they have disclosed is that it will be largely off-road, beginning in Barstow, California, and finishing some 200 or so miles away in the town of Primm, just across the Nevada border. On the way, the robotic vehicles can expect to encounter mountains and gulleys, cliffs and ditches, hairpins and boulders. As if the natural hazards won't be tough enough, Darpa has some obstacles of its own it will scatter along the course. "It's a difficult challenge. There are so many things that could happen," says Scott Gray, spokesman for Carnegie Mellon University's Red team.
Final details of the race course will be given to each team on a CD just 2 hours before the race starts. The CD will contain GPS coordinates of about 1,000 waypoints defining the course. To avoid disqualification, each vehicle in the race must not only hit each waypoint, but stay within set "corridors" between them. Vehicles that stray off course will immediately be shut down by chase cars following close behind or by helicopters watching the race from above.
The contest has attracted teams whose members range from school children and garden-shed robot enthusiasts to off-road racers and engineers at the country's top robotics institutes. The Red team at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute is one of the most experienced, and arguably favourite to win. Led by William "Red" Whittaker, who has previously sent robots into Three Mile island and Chernobyl, the team have stripped down a surplus US military humvee and kitted it out with stereo cameras, radar, laser scanners and GPS receivers. Onboard computers will hold in their memory satellite images of the local terrain, which the vehicle can use with GPS data to work out if it is close to hidden dangers, such as a cliff over the brow of a hill it is hurtling up. The radar and laser scanners will pick up any obstacles, such as boulders or other vehicles, in the way.
Darpa has expressly forbidden the use of Wacky Races tactics that might scupper the chances of the other contestants. The robotic vehicles are not allowed to carry weapons and must tackle obstacles by going round them, rather than squashing them or batting them out of the way.
In tests, the Red team's vehicle, Sandstorm, has reached speeds in excess of 70mph. "We like to think we've got a good chance of winning. We've certainly put in the work to make it successful," says Gray. "But you never know what will happen. It could rain, which might short-circuit the electronics. Or a vehicle right next to us could go off course and bump us out," he added.
At the University of California, Berkeley, Anthony Levandowski and his team are taking a completely different approach to the Grand Challenge. Instead of taking the easy route and modifying a car, they are entering a motorbike. "We thought about what is the best way to get across rough terrain, and the answer is a motorbike," says Levandowski. "The only problem is motorbikes have this big problem in that they just won't stand up by themselves."
The team have spent the best part of a year developing gyroscopes and other technologies for keeping the bike upright. It works, but only just. The eery result, a bike with no rider, has aptly been named Ghostrider.
Levandowski admits his team have made life tough for themselves, but says their plan was always to try something nobody else would consider. "If we fail, at least we tried to do something innovative, something that's never been done before."
The remaining entries are mostly converted army vehicles or four-wheel drive cars, with the exception of TerraMax, a giant six-wheeler built by a team at Ohio State University.
As the teams work around the clock to get their contraptions ready to race, final preparations are taking place along the race track too. While Darpa officials add more obstacles to the course, a team of biologists have been dispatched to "sweep" the route for endangered desert tortoises that might get squished on race day. Any likely looking burrows are being penned in for the day to stop the tortoises wandering out into the mayhem.
Despite the effort that has been put into getting the different vehicles ready in time, many engineers secretly admit they don't fancy their chances of finishing the course, let alone winning. One engineer was convinced at least one car would meet its fate at the bottom of a cliff. "Let's just hope the video cameras are running when that happens," he says.
