MIT for DARPA Robot Car Challenge
The DARPA Urban Challenge is about to happen on October 26 through November 3 this year. It is the third major robot-car competition mounted by the U.S. Defense Advance Research Projects Agency and will be held at the urban military training facility at the former George Air Force Base in Victorville, CA. What’s the prize? a whopping $2 million for the big winner.
Last August 9, the MIT has been announced as one of the 36 semi-finalists for the big competition. It will be the only representative from New England.
According to astronautics professor Jonathan How, one of four principal investigators (PIs) leading the school’s effort, said, “The MIT name is on the side of the car.” “Is it possible to add more pressure? I don’t know,” he continued.
How MIT will think its way out of dilemmas that may stymie other vehicles navigating the DARPA course is something robotics fans and enthusiasts can look forward to. In xconomy.com How was quoted as saying, “We have algorithms in place that are using 15 to 18 of our cores… If you didn’t have 40 computers you couldn’t do it that way — so we have a design freedom that others may not have.”
There will be no typical Volvo antenna mast in the MIT’s machine. All there is are electric servo-motors attached up to the gas pedal, brakes, and steering column. It also has few dozen off-the-shelf automobile radars, laser range finders and video cameras.
How said, “Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s going to drive so well in an urban setting.” This is for knowing that the real challenge in the DARPA competition mainly aims to build software that will give a vehicle “the ability to picture its surroundings and respond to encroaching hazards, all the while moving toward the finish line.”
Seth Teller, a professor in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), explained, “There are at least three levels of planning happening in the car… There is the long-range planning of ‘What intersections do I visit?’ Then there’s ‘What is the next few hundred meters of trajectory? What road segment should I choose to advance the mission?’ And then there’s, ‘What’s coming up in the next five or 10 meters, or the next few hundred milliseconds?’ [And] how should the gas and steering and brakes be moved so that the car meets the higher-level trajectory goals.” To sum it up, How said, “It’s a lot more dynamic than previous challenges.”
Moreover, Teller said, “If you could have safe autonomous cars, you might be able to avoid many of the 40,000 highway deaths we have every year in the United States. You could probably save a lot of fuel by having cars drive in a more smoothly coordinated fashion. And you could improve productivity by letting people read or work in the back seat while their cars drive.”
“We have had a very motivated group of graduate students who very early, in June 2006, basically banged on the table and said, ‘We really want to do this,’… We were game to do it, but to have them come and basically insist that we do it pushed us over the edge,” Teller continued.
More about this matter has been discussed in the site I have mentioned earlier. Upon reading, my interest to watch over MIT team’s performance in the competition was boosted, knowing that they have extreme dedicated to win the race.
