Posted on 03/13/2004 4:35:31 AM PST by billorites
The robots are coming.
At dawn today (about 9 a.m. EST), 15 of the strangest looking vehicles ever to put rubber to the road will rev their engines at Barstow's Slash X bar and barbecue and head out into the Mojave Desert.
Officially, the destination is Primm, Nev., a glitzy casino resort 200 miles to the east. But the real race is not to Primm. This is a race into the future.
A big red Humvee called Sandstorm, built by a robotics team from Carnegie Mellon University, will have the pole position, thanks to its fastest time on a closed course at speeds up to 30 miles an hour.
The 14 other starters include a hulking chartreuse military truck named TerraMax, a Chevy Tahoe called Bob and a Toyota pickup affectionately known as Dad.
Regardless of make, model and serial number, they all have one thing in common: no drivers. "Once they leave the starting line, the teams will have no control over the vehicles," director Anthony Tether said. "If the robot decides to go over a ravine, it will go over a ravine."
Already a winner
No one really expects the entrants in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Grand Challenge to reach Primm and claim the $1 million prize. DARPA is already talking about rerunning the competition in 2006.
But even before the order to "launch the 'bots" comes after first light this morning, there has been a winner.
It is DARPA. The Pentagon's leading research agency sponsored the challenge to stimulate innovative approaches to the development of robotic military vehicles.
"What we're seeing here is the technology of the future," said a beaming Air Force Col. Jose Negron after four days of qualifying runs at the California Speedway. "We have a congressional mandate that one-third of military vehicles must be autonomous by 2015, and this is going to help us develop vehicles that will save lives by getting soldiers off the battlefield," he said.
"We are interested in harvesting these technologies to help build the next generation of military vehicles. In fact, I have a team of scientists out there pouring over some of what we've seen right now."
'Priceless' event
DARPA has spent $13 million to organize the event. Tether estimates the participating robotics teams have spent more than $50 million of their own money on the competition.
"But the level of interest this competition has sparked is priceless," Tether said. "We haven't seen excitement like this since the early days of the Apollo program."
Of the25vehicles originally selected to compete, seven managed to complete the 1.3-mile obstacle course DARPA created. The desert, Negron said, "will be a much more rigorous test."
Once the robots leave the starting line, they will be guided only by onboard sensors and followinga string of navigation points—the equivalent of electronic bread crumbs — stretching all the way to the finish line.
With autonomous technology in its infancy, however, even robots that are old enough to drive require a little parental supervision to stay out of trouble.
Teams will follow each robot to make sure that it doesn't suddenly decide to drive off the course or ram someone's fence, as some of them did in qualifying runs.
Each judge carries a radio transmitter in a gray box with a large red button and a toggle switch. There are two choices: A judge can "pause" a robot to give it time to think about its next move or use the red button to halt it permanently and eliminate it from the race.
"The DARPA guys originally asked me if we could build obstacles along the course," said Sal Fish, president of SCORE, the off-road racing organization that is supervising the race and enforcing the rules. "But I told them this course doesn't need obstacles.
"There are some steep climbs up mountains, where the road drops off pretty steeply on one side. I'll be amazed if any of them go two miles."
Still, Fish is prepared to be surprised.
Science fiction author Isaac Asimov formulated the elegantly simple three "laws of robotics" in the 1940s:
1) Don't hurt humans.
2) Obey orders except where they conflict with law 1.
3) Protect yourself as long as there's no conflict with 1 and 2.
But back in Asimov's day, robots existed only in fiction. Today, 135,000 of them are at work in American factories. And now that they're learning to drive, the laws are a little more complicated.
The Grand Challenge requires the robots to obey all speed limits. No pushing or shoving is allowed. They can pass another robot, but can't hinder one trying to pass. They must not damage the environment, including the rare desert tortoise that lives in burrows along the route.
"There's still one thing that bothers me," Fish said. "In every race I've ever organized, I always go to the starting line to shake each driver's hand. What am I supposed to do for this one?"
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