Posted on 10/09/2005 11:52:52 AM PDT by Shuttle Shucker
"Stanford engineers steered the world toward a new era of driverless vehicles Saturday when their robotic Volkswagen SUV was the first to cross the finish line after a 132-mile race across the Nevada desert...The best showing last year was turned in by a Carnegie Mellon robo-Hummer nicknamed Sandstorm, which went just 7.4 miles in that 142-mile course before it strayed off the road and spun its wheels until the rubber burned. Yet even that ignoble finish fired the imaginations of inventors and hobbyists, who responded in even greater numbers to DARPA's 2005 challenge. In contrast to the 15 teams that raced robots last year, 195 teams applied for starting positions in this year's race. Carnegie Mellon re-entered Sandstorm and a second Hummer, called Highlander. DARPA let 43 teams compete in elimination trials that preceded the race and thinned the field down to the 23 driverless vehicles that began Saturday's race."
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
http://exploration.nasa.gov/centennialchallenge/cc_challenges.html
remain so comparatively miniscule, and practically devoid of launch-related opportunities?
ANSWER: The sponsorship & newsleak-craving space media
continues to ignore the story & the scandal, while
pork barrelers on the Hill keep plundering our treasury. But with retiring baby boomers on the
horizon, and our record high national debt that has
already grown by 40% over the past 5 years:
http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpenny.htm
...
"The people have the government that they deserve."
-Benjamin Franklin
ping
If our economic future were featured on "South Park", it would be named Kenny. We are blissfully headed to the abyss.
But what if we make the government procure everything through competitive prizes from now on? Wouldn't that inspire kids to fall in love with math & science again, while yielding major economic breakthroughs? DARPA has shown the way...
If everybody drives a robocar, and there is a car wreck, whom do we sue?
I don't literally mean the gummint should procure literally "everything" through genuinely competitive prizes, but NASA's a fine (wasteful) example of how it could come close to it in some respects...
I guess the manufacturer, and those involved with maintenance, as well as anyone who may have interfered with their proper functioning.
Might not be a bad idea if restricted to unclassified R&D type of work.
The question is: how can we make this happen before folks forget about this DARPA breakthrough? The bureaucrats prefer getting to pick winners, as it's more lucrative for them to do so than to simply offer competitive prizes with our hard-earned tax dollars.
Good words. Burt Rutan fan bump!!
<obviousness>
'Cause rolling-around on the ground costs a lot less than trying to make orbit?
</obviousness>
Those who make their living as truckers....take note. It might take a specialized lane and specialized roads, but robots don't require health insurance and paid vacations.
The bigger question is whether we really have any input at all.
Your thread title doesn't contain a single word from the article's original title.
We DO have input. These prizes emerged because we made it too costly, prestige-wise, for the bureaucrats NOT to offer them. And bureaucrats here in Washington NEED prestige to justify the salary increases and other perks that they think they deserve.
DARPA made this race so challenging because many feds wanted contestants (and the potential paradigm shift) to fail. But Burt Rutan helped inspire prizes contestants and the prizes approach achieved what years of DARPA contracts couldn't. Now it's up to us...
Somehow this title just doesn't do the scandal justice:
NEVADA DESERT
Computers, start your engines
Stanford team apparent winners in robot car race
Scandal? I see nothing in the story about any scandal.
Now that was funny !....true but still funny.
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