robots in disguise!

We all have witnessed the technological success of the robotic cars at the DARPA Urban Challenge. So now, what we are to discuss is the plans for putting the technology on the real road.

The final of the U.S. Defense Department’s Urban Challenge was first finished by cars with Volkswagen AG and General Motors Corp decals. They have finished the six-hour, 60-mile (100 km) course with the use of only onboard computers and equipment in plotting paths and steering themselves.

The recent challenge was the third in a series over four years. It was sponsored by the U.S. military as part of its effort to replace soldiers with robots driving supply vehicles.

One of the robot car participants was TerraMax. It is a 12-foot (3.7 meters) tall green truck from Oshkosh Truck Corp. It was developed exactly for the said purpose. It has been lumbered through a series of complex maneuvers prior to getting on the track. The new technology has been foreseen helping in civilian life. By fact, it and most entrants have focused on stopping fatalities from traffic accidents, considering that 40,000 of such accidents occur annually in the United States alone.

According Jesse Levinson, a PhD student from Stanford University who worked on his team’s artificial intelligence systems, “What is going to change the world is interpreting sensor data and making intelligent and safe decisions.”

Levinson and the others have described the technology focus in the three races since 2004 of DARPA (the Defense Department’s ‘Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’) as a development moving from hardware to artificial intelligence.

As you might observe, the products nearest completion have been based from the work in the previous races. One example is the driver in a box of Gray Matter Inc. It was a computer that was made to drive a car without making complex decisions.

Engineers of New Orleans have aimed to put inroads into the auto test market. Holding on to that, they saw the demand for a plug-and-play driver, which should be able to cover the same route in the same way over and over again. Unfortunately, there were none yet sold.

At present, there are existing cars equipped with advanced technology that does not yet offer perfect robot concept, but are slowly moving towards it. Volkswagen’s production Passat already has a cruise control feature that allows the vehicle to follow the car in front of it. Another example is the Lexus LS 600hL that features the Intelligent Park Assist system that uses rear camera and ultrasonic sensors to identify a parking space and eventually calculate the correct steering angle, allowing the vehicle to park itself without curbing the rims or bending the fenders.

Gerry Mayer, director of defense contractor Lockheed Martin’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, “We may not be far from technology assisting drivers… We’re probably a long way away from full automatic.”

Oh well… We are to wait then. For now, we need to settle ourselves with the current Mazda RX7 performance parts and not yet those much sophisticated technology we dream of having.

Automakers are always on the move to outwit other rival companies — constantly upgrading parts from BMW headlight to engine parts for enhanced power and fuel efficiency. We have seen the technology grow so fast that it has even been expected that we will be seeing high-powered and well-innovated driverless cars that are considerably robots years from now.

In fact, this year’s Los Angeles auto show holds a design challenge that anticipates vehicles wanting to be robots 50 years from now. Created by Chuck Pelly, the noted designer and teacher, the fourth edition of the event will be themed “Robocar 2057”. He said the theme has been inspired by the recent blockbuster film “Transformers”. And so, automotive design studios within Los Angeles are kept busy producing designs that show how artificial intelligence might improve the automobile and integrate it even closer with human lives.

In such competition, practical constraints such as marketability, fuel economy, safety and even high school physics are most likely placed back in the interest of exercising designer’s imaginations. So far, such cars are retained on papers and kept in digital form.

For Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility, the robot cars in the eight concepts are more like Transformers than traditional humanoid bots such as Robbie of the 1950s or Honda’s more recent robot “Asimo”.

The conceptualized cars are set to adopt futuristic technologies on its robotic aspect. And, I mean of technologies that apply the term nano… nanotech, nanotubes or nanofabrication.

Volkswagen, the world’s fourth largest automaker, has its SlipStream for 2057. It is a gleaming personal pod that resembles an upright vacuum cleaner. It flips down and sprouts fins for high-speed cruising.

Mazda, a Japanese automaker, has the MotorNari RX for the future. It has been named after the warrior who founded Hiroshima, the company’s home city. It looks closely like a model of a Fran Gehry building that someone has sat on. It has been designed controlled with a skintight suit of sensors.

Audi, a German automaker, has its Virtuea Quattro with a slogan: “Your holographic avatar”. You may have it compared with Auto Union racers of the 1930s, or sleep spaceships.

Mercedes Benz, another German automaker, has its SilverFlow for 2057. It looks like classically shaped vehicles of the 1930s. It is made of electronically arranged molecules, which can be “dissembled into a pool of ferromagnetic material for easy storage”.

Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, has its Biomobile Mecha that would run on pollution extracted from the air and has nanolaser wheels. It will be adapting the biomimicry concept that allows it to expand and contract to fit available space.

General Motors, an American automaker, has its OnStar Ant that is considerably a kind of minitable. It comes in bunches and arranges itself useful ways aided by flocking and herding software. It has been themed “ubliquitous mobility”, which meant a take on ubliquitous computing, a Silicon Valley buzzword.

Honda and Nissan, Japanese automakers, have the most practical entries in the event. Honda’s 1 4 (meaning one to the power of four) offers convenient car-pooling through combining riders and sections of a car into a single unit suitable for the H.O.V. (high occupancy vehicle) lane, a matter much on the mind of Southern California commuters. Nissan’s OneOne, on the other hand, is a pet robot. It takes the children to school and even plays with them.

Some of those concept robot cars are presumed to be solar hybrids, while some will be powered by hydrogen.

However, most of the technical descriptions seem to be like science fiction. For example, Mazda’s entry designed by Matthew Cunningham is described this way: “The MotoNari RW is comprised of a 100 percent reprototypable, carbon nano-tube/shape memory alloy weave with a photovoltaic coating. This enables programmable tensiometry and fluid movement while insuring efficient energy transfer to the in-wheel electrostatic nanomotors.” That’s quite tricky, right?

The judges in the competition will include Tom Matano, formerly of Mazda but now at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco; Imre Molnar of the College for Creative Studies in Detroit; Steward Reed of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California; and Chris Myers, an expert on robotics. The winner will be announced during press previews for the auto show.

Held at the Los Angeles Convention Center, the show will open starting on Friday and will end on November 25.

The Urban Challenge has just ended, just as I finally finished my online search for BMW bulb. After several weeks of waiting, here are now the placers in the race participated by 11 robo-cars…

Carnegie Mellon’s Tartan Racing Team headed by robotics expert William “Red” Whittaker won the first place prize of $2 million with its vehicle “Boss”, while Stanford University’s Stanford Racing team led by computer scientist Sebastian Thrun received $1 million as the second placer with its vehicle “Junior”, and Virginia Tech’s Victor Tango team got the $500,000 as the third placer.

That result has been revealed by DARPA director Tony Tether. After announcing the third- and second- place winners, he presented an anecdote regarding his college and graduate school days at Stanford University. It was mainly to add suspense, though it has been quite obvious that the first place prize will be given to Carnegie Mellon as it approaches first to the finish. Tether mentioned that Tartan was clearly the winner.

After running down through the team’s different start times and the race’ off-the-clock pauses, Tether proclaimed the results in numbers. Tartan’s vehicles got an average of approximately 14 miles per hour throughout the course, covering 55 miles. Stanford got 13 miles per hour, while Virginia Tech got a little bit less than that. Tether also declared MIT as the fourth placer.

Overwhelmed with the achievement, Whittaker said, “Robots sometimes stun the world, inspire a lot of people and change the belief of what is possible.” “We’ve seen that here and once the perception of what’s possible changes it never goes back. This is a phenomenal thing for robotics,” he continued. “I watched these things driving and I forgot after awhile that there was nobody in there,” he further said.

Chris Urmson, Tartan team’s director of technology said, “Everything that I saw Boss do looked great.” “It was smooth. It was fast, It interacted with other traffic well. It did what it was supposed to do,” he added.

Tether was so pleased with the race that he even called it a “fantastic accomplishment”. He said the technology for robotic vehicles is then ready enough for other companies and organizations to hone it further.

Tether said, “DARPA is an interesting organization.” “We really never finish anything. All we really do is show that it can be done. We take the technical excuse off the table, to the point where other people can no longer say ‘Hey this is a very interesting idea, but you know that you can’t do it.’ I think that we’re close to that point, that it’s time for this technology to [be furthered] by somebody.”

Now, we are like to think who would really adopt this concept on actual road cars and who will make it available in the global market.

Nissan Motor Company, Ltd., a Japanese automobile manufacturer, introduces the Pivo 2, an advanced electric concept car that will debut at the upcoming Tokyo Motor Show beginning October 27. It will be powered by advanced compact Lithium-ion batteries and will employ ‘by-wire’ technologies for braking and steering. It features a 360 degree turning cabin and 90 degree turning wheels that will make reversing a thing of the past.

Nissan head designer Shiro Nakamura said, “We want people to feel how cars can be so much fun.”

As part of advancement, the second generation Pivo 2 makes use of a Robotic Agent to create a unique owner-vehicle relationship that will more likely be acting like a friend. The car’s designer said that the dashboard robot can sense mood and even prompt an angry driver to cool down or a sleepy driver to take a break.

Nissan designers have refined the wheels on the Pivo 2. They removed axles and install four motors to control and steer each tire.

Nissan said that even if the car is fully functional, it would still be too pricey to be in production for the mass market.

The Pivo 2 will be displayed at the Nissan Ginza Gallery, 5-8-1 Finza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo of October 13 to 14, 10:00 – 20:00, which will serve as an exclusive public sneak preview for the vehicle.

By October 27, Pivo 2 will be features along with four other exciting production and concept vehicles at the Tokyo Motor Show.

The events are only days far, for now I have to get some replacement BMW 328 parts for my car.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a government research arm, invited 35 teams to compete in a driverless vehicle race. One of the expected participants is the Team Caltech, a robotics group at the California Institute of Technology.

The Team Caltech is in the process of fine-tuning - not typically just putting in premium Saab tune up parts or the-likes but through using more sophisticated measures. They have been doing series of tests and trials with a large self-driving van, a Ford E-350 weighing 8,000 pounds with armor plating. It is in preparation for this month’s semifinals of the Urban Grand Challenge.

One of the rules in the race says that if a robot hits another vehicle, its team is automatically disqualified from the competition. Such case is highly possible to those newbie machine drivers. In the case of the victim of a collision, its team is given 30 minutes to fix their machine and continue in the race. However, if the damage is too much, the team will be out of the competition.

The Team Caltech seems to be highly confident that they can survive until the end of the challenge, surpassing any crash that their machine might get into. Joel Burdick, professor of mechanical engineering at the California Institute of Technology, and Team Caltech’s co-leader, said, “We’re one of the biggest robots in the race. We think we’d be a physical victor in any crash.”

The challenge does not only require the robots to have physical hardware to win the competition. The teams must be able to create software that can synthesize and interpret the data coming in from multiple external sensors on the car, including radar, ladar, cameras and GPS. Such software should also have the ability to plot a drivable path on city roads, avoid real-time obstacles and follow traffic laws.

If people have a hard time doing such mission, how much more for the robots? But, it isn’t impossible, since the teams’ eagerness is boosted by a $2 million first place price. The difficulty is worth that much. So, each team prepares very well for the event on October 26, in Victorville, California, at the site of the former George Air Force Base.

DARPA offered $1 million to 11 track “A” teams, including the Team Caltech. It is their way to support the top participants and competitive challengers in the Urban Grand Challenge. That’s one of the reasons why Caltech currently have enough money to prepare.

In 2005, Caltech build its robot, “Alice”, spending approximately $200,000 in the process including travel expenses. Caltech will be using 15 percent of the original software used in their robot. And, the rest are new codes. The software is comprised with three parts: a mission planner that takes in data from DARPA to sequence that course of the race, a traffic planner that gets data from sensing technology on factors like the speed of other cars on the road; and a trajectory planner to execute on the above data. There are still small errors in the program, but Caltech is already working on it.

The dedicated Caltech team is composed of about seven full-time graduate students, one post-doctoral student and two faculty members. The members are from several departments, of which include computer science and mechanical engineering departments. They are supported by Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Lab, NASA’s research center, with regards to the computer vision system. A professor in Caltech’s control and dynamical systems department, specializing control theory, Richard Murray is held as the team’s three-time leader. And, Burdick sees the expertise in control theory, a branch of engineering and mathematics that studies the behavior of dynamic systems as an advantage for the team to stand out in the competition. He said, “This is a large-scale computing problem. We’re going to have some unique, more structured approaches to planning algorithms.”

Well, that would mean we could expect a great performance of the Team Caltech in the DARPA Urban Challenge. And, they are one of the closest possible qualifiers in the finals on November 3.