Home > $$$ Your Hard Earned TAX DOLLERS Hard at work! $$$$

$$$ Your Hard Earned TAX DOLLERS Hard at work! $$$$

by Open-Publishing - Sunday 9 October 2005
15 comments

Wars and conflicts Economy-budget USA

Driverless vehicles prepare to rumble in Mojave Desert

PRIMM, Nev. (AP) - A customized Volkswagen SUV created by Stanford University became the first driverless vehicle to cross the finish line Saturday of a $2-million, Pentagon-sponsored robot race across the rugged Mojave Desert.

A customized red Hummer built by Carnegie Mellon University, dubbed H1ghlander races through the Mojave desert in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) 2005 Grand Challenge robot race Saturday. (AP/Damian Dovarganes)

The race announcer did not immediately declare a winner because 22 out of the 23 robots left the starting line at staggered times at dawn, racing against the clock, rather than each other. As the Volkswagen robot dubbed Stanley crossed the finish line, a group of Stanford engineers and scientists erupted into cheers.

Four other robots remained on the course.

Last year’s much-hyped inaugural robot race ended without a winner when all the self-navigating vehicles broke down shortly after leaving the starting gate. Sandstorm, a customized Humvee by Carnegie Mellon University, chugged the farthest at 12 kilometres.

Of the 23 robots that competed Saturday, 15 vehicles failed to navigate the entire 212-kilometre course but most still managed to beat Sandstorm’s distance last year.

The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, plans to award $2 million to the first vehicle to cover the race in less than 10 hours. The taxpayer-funded race was intended to spur innovation and development of remote-control-free robots that could be used in the battlefield.

Stanley finished the course in less than 7 1/2 hours.

The unmanned vehicles must use their computer brains and sensing devices to follow a programmed route and avoid hitting obstacles that may doom their chances.

Vehicles have to drive on rough, winding desert roads and dry lake beds filled with overhanging brush and man-made obstacles. The machines also must traverse a narrow two-kilometre mountain pass with a steep drop-off and go through three tunnels designed to knock out their GPS signals.

This year’s field was more competitive. Even before Saturday’s race, many teams tested their vehicles in parts of the Southwest desert under race-like conditions including some that practised on last year’s course from Barstow, Calif., to Primm.

The vehicles were tricked out with the latest sensors, lasers, cameras and radar that feed information to several onboard computers. This helps vehicles make intelligent decisions such as distinguishing a dangerous boulder from a tumbleweed and calculating whether a chasm is too deep to cross.

Cornell University’s military light strike vehicle travelled about 30 kilometres when it failed to cross a bridge. Team members were trying to figure out what went wrong.

"We’re at a loss," said Ephrahim Garcia, a Cornell mechanical engineer.

"It’s a disappointment."

The so-called Grand Challenge race is part of the Pentagon’s effort to cut the risk of casualties by fulfilling a congressional mandate to have a third of all military ground vehicles unmanned by 2015.

The military currently has a small fleet of autonomous ground vehicles stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan but the machines are remotely controlled by a soldier who usually rides in the same convoy. The Pentagon wants to eliminate the human factor and use self-thinking robotic vehicles to ferry supplies in war zones.

------

On the Net:
http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge
http://www.grandchallenge.org

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/TechNew...

Forum posts

  • Big deal and a useless technology.

    • Ever notice how they have unlimited funds for horse shit while they cry poor about any social programs including social security which they say is broke (even though we all pay huge sums of our pay checks for it)....wonder why with hosreshit like this and a million other horseshit programs that squander the social security money. Washington is full of crooks, we need to clean house and throw the criminals out.

    • Are you crazy?!?!? This technology is going to save lives. Soldiers won’t have to drive into land mines when they’re replenishing supplies. This is money well spent, and extremely cheap, for what they’ve been able to develop.

    • Good Point!
      Land mines in foreign countries while waging illegal wars is exactly what the US needs to be involved in!!
      Well spent money? If you think the money is well spent , why don’t you Pay for it our of your OWN pocket. And while your at it, maybe you could replenish the trillions Stolen from the pentagon and the US Tax Payer.

    • the real reason for this technolgy is for use by the CIA to load explosives on them and drive them to there tagets mainly Iraq police staions, and areas of a lot of people. To further blame the terrorist.

    • Bullshit....this is just another warmongering waste of money. If we would stay the hell out of other countries affairs and mind our own god damn business and stop squandering money on hosreshit, we would not be a target for lunatics, and best of all we would not be in 8trillion dollars of debt.

    • Don’t forget the dead Iraqi placed behind the wheel of the remote-controlled vehicle for realism.

      Iraqi witness to a "suicide’ car bomb attack: "I saw the driver. He looked like he was in a Jihadi-induced trance."

  • "illegal wars" says YOU and other political oppenents, that is only an opinion in this gray area. and I and many others respectfully disagree with you.

    to the one who said, if you think its so important, why don’t you pay for it? Well as a taxpayer and voter, I AM PAYING FOR IT, and I am fine with this. sure there are stupid things the taxpayer money is spent on, but not this, not reducing our life losses, and CONVINCING the enemy, that they cannot win, so they should not even try.

    to the nutjbob or joker (I could not tell if he was just trolling), who said this is for the cia who wants to blow up iraqi police stations, that would not benefit the cia, or the ones in power at all, they KNOW they need to get out of this nasty position asap, and they need the iraqi police intact to do that.
    Before making such an allegation, please post the logic of your argument too. if you were just kidding, good one (got me).

    • What is a political oppenent?

      Grey area? Can you explain why we are at war with Iraq? should the US go to war based on "gray area?"

      I believe the poster meant Pay for it Solely from "your and your many others Pocket", If you cannot do that, then you have no leg to stand on.

  • If it wasn’t for DARPA there wouldn’t be an Internet. The United States does it again.! I’m sure in twenty or thirty years Europe and others will get some benefits from this technology. (How nice) So if you use the Internet you should praise DARPA and the United States every day and understand that they know the big picture better than you.

    Too bad about that EU satellite that couldn’t get launched.

    • Horseshit....new technology would come from the private sector no matter, and maybe even sooner because consumer demand would be more of a focus....all of the excuses about hurray for the military squandering tax money is just horseshit. In case you dumbasses don’t realize it the U.S. is broke and borrowing from communist China and Japanese, we’re the biggest debtor nation and assholes think there is an endless supply of tax money for hosrseshit and horseshit programs like this is the reason why, that and phony terrorist wars and government theft by the likes of Cheneyburton et.al.

    • Well Said, and exactly right on the money with your point.

      At least we can say that not everyone is brain dead. U.S. The largest debtor world. and to watch the money being spent the way it is, It’s really horrific to see such frivilous spending programs shoved in our faces while the country has past beyond bankrupt status. Just think of those who were employed for such programs. they are laughing all the way to the bank, because they know it’s nothing more than a fraud among the mass numbers of frauds that have forced the U.S. into this bankrupt state. whats next $5,000,000 Jet ski’s?

    • And to think War = Powergrab = Tax payer money = Weapon development = They will be using these toys on You. All these wonderful expensive gagets will brought home to be used on You. You paid for it all.

    • The internet was established somewhat by the military. HTML was invented by CERN scientists in Geneva, Switzerland. But it was basically the demand of the private industry and users which created the now available infrastructure.

    • Somewhere on the internet, which was, by the way, a british invention, there is a tale of how Iraq and Iran pretented to wage war.
      Convinced by there own false intelligence and foolhardy greed, the americans attacked Iraq.
      All that oil, power, and a greater Israel, the return of christ and a new puppy for george w.

      So if america was so smart, how come they got mauled, all those $25 million tanks, blown apart by $25 dollar r.p.g.s.
      No tank in the world can beat them.http://iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/

      How come the turks/kurds got the northern oilfields, the brits got the coast and the south, and the u.s. got the bit in the moddle with no oil?

      Why has the whole world boycotted american goods?

      Most of all, I`m tired of trolls and trolling,
      tired of claim and counter-claim.

      I think america is waking up, and shaking off the deciet of religion, and the empty lie of war.

      Because there are good americans....

      A Thanksgiving Prayer
      — - by William S. Burroughs

      Thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts.

      Thanks for a continent to despoil and poison.

      Thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger.

      Thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin leaving the carcasses to rot.

      Thanks for bounties on wolves and coyotes.

      Thanks for the American dream, To vulgarize and to falsify until the bare lies shine through.

      Thanks for the KKK.

      For nigger-killin’ lawmen, feelin’ their notches.

      For decent church-goin’ women, with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces.

      Thanks for "Kill a Queer for Christ" stickers.

      Thanks for laboratory AIDS.

      Thanks for Prohibition and the war against drugs.

      Thanks for a country where nobody’s allowed to mind the own business.

      Thanks for a nation of finks.

      Yes, thanks for all the memories— all right let’s see your arms!

      You always were a headache and you always were a bore.

      Thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams.

      Ah cullons!