A well-publicized race in the desert earlier this month proved that artificially intelligent robots can drive autonomously over rugged terrain and long distances. But will the technology be relevant to average Americans?
If you ask the masterminds behind the robots, the answer is "yes, it's just a matter of time."
Vehicles powered with artificial-intelligence software and sporting the ability to "see" the road with external sensors will be a staple in the U.S. military within 10 years, under a mandate from Congress that spurred the desert robot rally. The underlying technology also will find its way into popular cars with features like collision and lane-departure warnings and adaptive cruise controls. The technology is also relevant, experts say, for the disabled and for automating machines.
"It's not just about a bright idea. There's a lot of work to do. That business of development and productization and building an enterprise is a lot harder than creating a technology," said William "Red" Whittaker, a professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. So much robotics research has been done at Carnegie Mellon that CMU's hometown of Pittsburgh is jokingly called "Roboburgh" in some science circles.
For Stanford University, the winner of the DARPA Grand Challenge robot desert race and its $2 million prize, the goal has long been to make vehicles safer for the road.
Stanford set out with the particular interest of developing technology that would help carmakers include aids that could cut down on the number of traffic deaths caused by inattention or intoxication. Now Stanford has $2 million to invest in improving its technology and artificial intelligence research, under the direction of robotics professor Sebastian Thrun. Volkswagen, which sponsored Stanford's vehicle, Stanley, and donated a Touareg V5 for the race, is also developing this technology for its line of cars.
The next frontier will be to develop technologies that can help vehicles improve city driving, as opposed to motoring off-road or on highways, where there are no stoplights or pedestrians. The race gave the robots a structure for driving the course. But on the highway or in cities, intelligent vehicles won't have that direction.
"We've been working on the war on cancer, but with this technology we're a lot closer to saving more lives--young lives--through accidents, by giving attentional aids," said Gary Bradski, a machine-learning expert at Intel who worked on Stanley. "The question is how to alert people without causing an accident."
Four autonomous vehicles--Stanford's Stanley, Carnegie Mellon's H1ghlander and Sandstorm, and Gray Insurance's Kat 5--drove a tricky 132-mile course in the Mojave Desert. They were the first unmanned cars ever to complete the race designed by DARPA, or the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the research and development arm of the U.S. Department of Defense.
And after only two years of hosting the DARPA Grand Challenge, the U.S. military says it has accomplished its goal of fostering innovation in artificially intelligent designed vehicles. Within 10 years, such vehicles are supposed to make up a third of the U.S. army's transportation.
The technology has already made its way into contractor machinery, and some of the cars showed surprising resilience.
H1ghlander had engine problems the day of the race, which caused it to finish 40 minutes late and ultimately lose the $2 million to Stanford University. Despite its trouble, the car still finished--a testimony to the system software's sturdiness, Carnegie Mellon's Whittaker said. "On its worst day it can run anything," he said.
The same sturdiness is exhibited in robots used by two companies spun out of Whittaker's robotics research. One is RedZone Robotics, which uses robotic machines to make maps of sewer systems. Whittaker also founded Workhorse Technologies, unmanned robots to explore and make maps of mines.
"We've been working on the war on cancer, but with this technology we're a lot closer to saving more lives--young lives--through accidents, by giving attentional aids."
--Gary Bradski, machine learning expert, Intel
The technology is also being deployed in earth-moving and construction machines from Caterpillar, which was one of the major sponsors of CMU's Red Team.
For its future combat system, the government plans to build a family of 18 vehicle types that will be faster and lighter on the road. The group will include so-called drive-by-wire vehicles, as well as some with autonomous and semi-autonomous capabilities. Drive by wire is a car that can be driven without a steering wheel from an internal protected seat or from a remote location, but it is still human operated. The car, perhaps a supply vehicle, could be lightly armored if driven remotely. A semi-autonomous vehicle, on the other hand, can be programmed to travel from point A to point B, or to follow another car.
The autonomous vehicle would be heavily armored and could take GPS (Global Positioning System) coordinates of the road and create a map of obstacles and pass that data back to the semi-autonomous truck. All this could help keep soldiers out of the line of fire.
"There will be programs in the next four or five years, such as
I dunno if I like automated cars. If I virus gets into a computer that's not too life threatening but a car with AI? It could run over people. Better not be using M$ software but still.
This all sounds great but we should be very careful not to give too much power to Robots. There's only so far you could go unless we could upload ourselves and live forever that way.
That's the part of the programming DARPA doesn't want you to know about. Imagine an autonomous heavily armed robot that just sprints all over the battlefield running over enemy soldiers splat splat splat.
I dunno if I like automated cars. If I virus gets into a computer that's not too life threatening but a car with AI? It could run over people. Better not be using M$ software but still.
This all sounds great but we should be very careful not to give too much power to Robots. There's only so far you could go unless we could upload ourselves and live forever that way.
That's the part of the programming DARPA doesn't want you to know about. Imagine an autonomous heavily armed robot that just sprints all over the battlefield running over enemy soldiers splat splat splat.
Robot cars, OK, but bikes, vaccum cleaners, household bots for working gals
Yes, OK, so Mr. America gets his self-driving car, so he can continue to eat on the road and chat without having to think, but what about us working girls who come home to yet more housework at 8pm at night? Anybody out there going to give us the self-activating, safe, efficient housebot that does everything from cleaning floors, laundering to washing up the dishes? A real navigation challenge! And it has to be able to tell between live and dead so as not to microwave the cat by accident.
Robot cars, OK, but bikes, vaccum cleaners, household bots for working gals
Yes, OK, so Mr. America gets his self-driving car, so he can continue to eat on the road and chat without having to think, but what about us working girls who come home to yet more housework at 8pm at night? Anybody out there going to give us the self-activating, safe, efficient housebot that does everything from cleaning floors, laundering to washing up the dishes? A real navigation challenge! And it has to be able to tell between live and dead so as not to microwave the cat by accident.
Robot cars are cool. So were computers until some hacker invented the first virus. My biggest problem is the cost... It would cost trillions to create a country wide system. But since our goverment spends money in "other" ways we dont have any money for important stuff, like education maybe.
Robot cars are cool. So were computers until some hacker invented the first virus. My biggest problem is the cost... It would cost trillions to create a country wide system. But since our goverment spends money in "other" ways we dont have any money for important stuff, like education maybe.
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gets into a computer that's not too life
threatening but a car with AI? It could run over
people. Better not be using M$ software but
still.
careful not to give too much power to Robots.
There's only so far you could go unless we could
upload ourselves and live forever that way.
gets into a computer that's not too life
threatening but a car with AI? It could run over
people. Better not be using M$ software but
still.
careful not to give too much power to Robots.
There's only so far you could go unless we could
upload ourselves and live forever that way.
And it has to be able to tell between live and dead so as not to microwave the cat by accident.
And it has to be able to tell between live and dead so as not to microwave the cat by accident.
So were computers until some hacker invented the first virus. My biggest problem is the cost... It would cost trillions to create a country wide system. But since our goverment spends money in "other" ways we dont have any money for important stuff, like education maybe.
So were computers until some hacker invented the first virus. My biggest problem is the cost... It would cost trillions to create a country wide system. But since our goverment spends money in "other" ways we dont have any money for important stuff, like education maybe.