MetalBoy
02-26-2004, 11:12 PM
http://www.dailybreeze.com/content/news/nmdarpa2.html
LOL This is where I went to High School! woot Go Palos Verdes Road Warriors! woot They don't have a chance in hell of winning the contract though.rofl
http://www.pvrw.com
Teens invited to join race to Vegas
TECHNOLOGY: The Department of Defense is sponsoring a $1 million contest for driver-less vehicles.
The group of about 40 students and parents charged into the school parking lot Sunday afternoon. Their excitement was palpable.
“It’s beautiful,” one said breathlessly.
“Cool,” another shouted.
“God bless Honda.”
Gleaming in the hazy sunshine stood the gold-colored 2003 Acura MDX, earmarked to become the “Doom Buggy,” Palos Verdes High School’s entry in a unique 300-mile race across the Mojave Desert.
The catch: There will be no driver. The car will need to intelligently guide itself over unpaved roads, rocky surfaces and narrow canyons from Barstow to Las Vegas in under 10 hours. The creator whose vehicle accomplishes this feat will take home a $1 million prize and unlimited bragging rights.
The Grand Challenge is the brainchild of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, an arm of the U.S. Department of Defense, noted as an incubator for new technologies — such as the Internet, stealth aircraft and the remote-controlled spy plane used in Afghanistan.
PVHS is the only high school in the nation that has risen to the challenge, vying alongside scores of teams that include formidable universities such as Carnegie Mellon Institute and California Institute of Technology, seasoned engineering firms and mom-and-pop hobbyists.
“I trust they’re watching their heels,” Jim Howard, a parent consulting on the PVHS Road Warriors’ team, said of the competition. “Because we’re nipping at them.”
The off-road race, which will be held in March, was conceived as a way to spur development of autonomous technologies in response to a congressional mandate that calls for one-third of ground combat vehicles to operate unassisted by 2015. DARPA has spent millions of dollars in recent years on research but found progress lagging.
The race aims to excite inventors and reach beyond the scope of traditional defense contractors to tap into the ingenuity of off-road racers, engineers, entertainment gurus, robotics experts — and high school students, said Grand Challenge spokesman Don Shipley.
“We’re thrilled that they’re confident enough to be involved,” Shipley said of the youngest team to enter and be accepted in the challenge. “Who knows where the solution will come from?”
The Road Warriors submitted their vehicle’s technical specifications — the result of months of work — to DARPA in early October, a key step in the process to becoming an official contender. The agency announced Wednesday that the team qualified to officially participate, becoming one of only 40 teams out of 86 applicants to advance. The next milestone is in early December, when DARPA officials will inspect the teams’ vehicles and further winnow the final competitor pool.
“It’s an incredible accomplishment for all the teams that have made it this far,” Shipley said.
Sophomore team member Erica Jensen expressed pride at the Road Warriors’ standing.
“We’re up against all these big universities and engineering firms and showing that we can make a difference, too,” Jensen said.
Both on paper and in practice, the team has made significant strides toward creating a self-guiding vehicle. In early September, students and parents gathered to watch a golf cart the students had modified — their test bed vehicle — drive itself from one end of the school parking lot to the other.
“It was so awesome to see it go by itself,” Jensen said.
The Road Warriors, the name the students chose for their team, comprise about 40 students from PV High, Palos Verdes Peninsula High School and Beverly Hills High School who meet weekly for several hours. Several participants have extensive computing experience, and one placed first in the Los Angeles County Science Fair Robotics Division for an autonomous vehicle.
Competing against teams that have multimillion-dollar budgets is challenging, said Graham Robertson, a science teacher at PVHS and the Road Warriors’ adviser. “But we’ve come a long way,” he added.
The team has amassed more than $100,000 in funding. The initial seed money and golf cart came courtesy of the PVHS Booster Club. Electronic Mobility Controls, a Louisiana-based company specializing in the design and manufacture of adaptive driving controls for the disabled, donated $40,000 worth of equipment. And, of course, there is the Acura, donated by Tom Laymon, a parent from American Honda.
Plastered on the front of the car are the logos of the team’s sponsors, as well as the Road Warriors’ own emblem — a blue trident-bearing sea king, the school mascot, riding in a car labeled “PV High” with a license plate reading 㥯-04,” the month of the race.
Gina Chien, the student who designed the winning logo, said her goal was to make it bright, fun and distinctive.
“I wanted to make it more ‘high school,’ more on the kid side,” the sophomore said. “We’re the only high school competing against all the adults, and I wanted to show that.”
The name the students chose for their vehicle — the Doom Buggy — is also distinctive of their video-game generation.
“My son’s philosophy is: If you can’t blow it up, what good is it?” parent Howard said, laughing. “These kids grew up on video games and Terminator movies, so there had to be some kind of impending destructive nature to the name.”
Several other competitors — whose vehicle proposals ranged from modified Jeeps and Humvees to self-propelling spheres — gave their entries equally whimsical and fantastic names, such as Cowboy Up, Team Rambo and Arctic Tortoise.
But the challenges for the self-guiding vehicles are real.
The Mojave Desert, rising from near sea level to more than 8,000 feet, has long been a training ground for the nation’s military might. The teams will not know the exact route until two hours before race time, at which point they must program the required path into on-board computers, push a button and let the vehicle find its way to Vegas.
“There is no remote control,” said Joe Bebel, a PVHS sophomore and leader of the autonomous systems team. “This car has to do what no car has ever done before — guide itself intelligently.”
To that end, students will equip the Doom Buggy with global positioning satellite navigation systems, laser range finders, stereo video cameras and radars to enable it to find its way. Averaging 30 mph, the SUV will need to discern between obstacles it can drive through — sage brush or dust clouds — and obstacles it needs to avoid — rocks, water and endangered desert tortoises.
The military does have autonomous air vehicles, such as the unmanned airplanes recently used in Iraq to perform precision bombing and reconnaissance missions, Grand Challenge spokesman Shipley said. But because of the additional complications of maneuvering on the ground, the autonomous air technology is far advanced.
There have also been some unmanned ground vehicles equipped with sensors and computer systems that can guide them around obstacles, but none currently can obtain the information, process it and act upon it as quickly as a human can.
R. Kevin Watson, an engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, said the vehicle DARPA is looking for will have to travel about 100 times faster than the sophisticated automated rovers NASA hopes to use on Mars next year, which move at less than 1 mph and have round-the-clock human input into decision-making.
“The DARPA vehicles don’t have that kind of benefit — they have to deal with any kind of terrain at very high speeds all on their own,” Watson said. “That’s a huge challenge.”
The team that accomplishes this will be making a quantum leap in robotics, Shipley said. “It’s like Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic,” he added. “It’s never been done before.”
The Pentagon’s ultimate goal is to save soldiers’ lives by replacing them with unmanned vehicles in battles where casualties would be likely. Eventually, nonmilitary applications are expected, from automatic crash avoidance systems in automobiles to unmanned vehicles performing dangerous work — firefighting or cleaning up chemical spills — now done by humans.
For the students at PV High, participating in this project is a chance to be a part of history.
“In the future, we could transport things without human drivers,” said Shaun Mansour, a freshman on the team. “We’ll have been part of the first group to try this.”
So, who do the Road Warriors believe will win the competition?
“We will,” said parent Cindy Jensen with confidence. “Of course.”
Team adviser Robertson was more cautious, echoing even DARPA’s own prediction that no team would likely claim the $1 million prize this year. Congress has allocated the award through 2007, and DARPA representatives said they plan to hold the event until there is a winner.
“These kids are part of the solution for tomorrow,” Robertson said, pointing at two freshmen intently dismantling the cowl over the Acura’s steering wheel. “By the time they graduate, there will be a winner — maybe even us.”
LOL This is where I went to High School! woot Go Palos Verdes Road Warriors! woot They don't have a chance in hell of winning the contract though.rofl
http://www.pvrw.com
Teens invited to join race to Vegas
TECHNOLOGY: The Department of Defense is sponsoring a $1 million contest for driver-less vehicles.
The group of about 40 students and parents charged into the school parking lot Sunday afternoon. Their excitement was palpable.
“It’s beautiful,” one said breathlessly.
“Cool,” another shouted.
“God bless Honda.”
Gleaming in the hazy sunshine stood the gold-colored 2003 Acura MDX, earmarked to become the “Doom Buggy,” Palos Verdes High School’s entry in a unique 300-mile race across the Mojave Desert.
The catch: There will be no driver. The car will need to intelligently guide itself over unpaved roads, rocky surfaces and narrow canyons from Barstow to Las Vegas in under 10 hours. The creator whose vehicle accomplishes this feat will take home a $1 million prize and unlimited bragging rights.
The Grand Challenge is the brainchild of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, an arm of the U.S. Department of Defense, noted as an incubator for new technologies — such as the Internet, stealth aircraft and the remote-controlled spy plane used in Afghanistan.
PVHS is the only high school in the nation that has risen to the challenge, vying alongside scores of teams that include formidable universities such as Carnegie Mellon Institute and California Institute of Technology, seasoned engineering firms and mom-and-pop hobbyists.
“I trust they’re watching their heels,” Jim Howard, a parent consulting on the PVHS Road Warriors’ team, said of the competition. “Because we’re nipping at them.”
The off-road race, which will be held in March, was conceived as a way to spur development of autonomous technologies in response to a congressional mandate that calls for one-third of ground combat vehicles to operate unassisted by 2015. DARPA has spent millions of dollars in recent years on research but found progress lagging.
The race aims to excite inventors and reach beyond the scope of traditional defense contractors to tap into the ingenuity of off-road racers, engineers, entertainment gurus, robotics experts — and high school students, said Grand Challenge spokesman Don Shipley.
“We’re thrilled that they’re confident enough to be involved,” Shipley said of the youngest team to enter and be accepted in the challenge. “Who knows where the solution will come from?”
The Road Warriors submitted their vehicle’s technical specifications — the result of months of work — to DARPA in early October, a key step in the process to becoming an official contender. The agency announced Wednesday that the team qualified to officially participate, becoming one of only 40 teams out of 86 applicants to advance. The next milestone is in early December, when DARPA officials will inspect the teams’ vehicles and further winnow the final competitor pool.
“It’s an incredible accomplishment for all the teams that have made it this far,” Shipley said.
Sophomore team member Erica Jensen expressed pride at the Road Warriors’ standing.
“We’re up against all these big universities and engineering firms and showing that we can make a difference, too,” Jensen said.
Both on paper and in practice, the team has made significant strides toward creating a self-guiding vehicle. In early September, students and parents gathered to watch a golf cart the students had modified — their test bed vehicle — drive itself from one end of the school parking lot to the other.
“It was so awesome to see it go by itself,” Jensen said.
The Road Warriors, the name the students chose for their team, comprise about 40 students from PV High, Palos Verdes Peninsula High School and Beverly Hills High School who meet weekly for several hours. Several participants have extensive computing experience, and one placed first in the Los Angeles County Science Fair Robotics Division for an autonomous vehicle.
Competing against teams that have multimillion-dollar budgets is challenging, said Graham Robertson, a science teacher at PVHS and the Road Warriors’ adviser. “But we’ve come a long way,” he added.
The team has amassed more than $100,000 in funding. The initial seed money and golf cart came courtesy of the PVHS Booster Club. Electronic Mobility Controls, a Louisiana-based company specializing in the design and manufacture of adaptive driving controls for the disabled, donated $40,000 worth of equipment. And, of course, there is the Acura, donated by Tom Laymon, a parent from American Honda.
Plastered on the front of the car are the logos of the team’s sponsors, as well as the Road Warriors’ own emblem — a blue trident-bearing sea king, the school mascot, riding in a car labeled “PV High” with a license plate reading 㥯-04,” the month of the race.
Gina Chien, the student who designed the winning logo, said her goal was to make it bright, fun and distinctive.
“I wanted to make it more ‘high school,’ more on the kid side,” the sophomore said. “We’re the only high school competing against all the adults, and I wanted to show that.”
The name the students chose for their vehicle — the Doom Buggy — is also distinctive of their video-game generation.
“My son’s philosophy is: If you can’t blow it up, what good is it?” parent Howard said, laughing. “These kids grew up on video games and Terminator movies, so there had to be some kind of impending destructive nature to the name.”
Several other competitors — whose vehicle proposals ranged from modified Jeeps and Humvees to self-propelling spheres — gave their entries equally whimsical and fantastic names, such as Cowboy Up, Team Rambo and Arctic Tortoise.
But the challenges for the self-guiding vehicles are real.
The Mojave Desert, rising from near sea level to more than 8,000 feet, has long been a training ground for the nation’s military might. The teams will not know the exact route until two hours before race time, at which point they must program the required path into on-board computers, push a button and let the vehicle find its way to Vegas.
“There is no remote control,” said Joe Bebel, a PVHS sophomore and leader of the autonomous systems team. “This car has to do what no car has ever done before — guide itself intelligently.”
To that end, students will equip the Doom Buggy with global positioning satellite navigation systems, laser range finders, stereo video cameras and radars to enable it to find its way. Averaging 30 mph, the SUV will need to discern between obstacles it can drive through — sage brush or dust clouds — and obstacles it needs to avoid — rocks, water and endangered desert tortoises.
The military does have autonomous air vehicles, such as the unmanned airplanes recently used in Iraq to perform precision bombing and reconnaissance missions, Grand Challenge spokesman Shipley said. But because of the additional complications of maneuvering on the ground, the autonomous air technology is far advanced.
There have also been some unmanned ground vehicles equipped with sensors and computer systems that can guide them around obstacles, but none currently can obtain the information, process it and act upon it as quickly as a human can.
R. Kevin Watson, an engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, said the vehicle DARPA is looking for will have to travel about 100 times faster than the sophisticated automated rovers NASA hopes to use on Mars next year, which move at less than 1 mph and have round-the-clock human input into decision-making.
“The DARPA vehicles don’t have that kind of benefit — they have to deal with any kind of terrain at very high speeds all on their own,” Watson said. “That’s a huge challenge.”
The team that accomplishes this will be making a quantum leap in robotics, Shipley said. “It’s like Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic,” he added. “It’s never been done before.”
The Pentagon’s ultimate goal is to save soldiers’ lives by replacing them with unmanned vehicles in battles where casualties would be likely. Eventually, nonmilitary applications are expected, from automatic crash avoidance systems in automobiles to unmanned vehicles performing dangerous work — firefighting or cleaning up chemical spills — now done by humans.
For the students at PV High, participating in this project is a chance to be a part of history.
“In the future, we could transport things without human drivers,” said Shaun Mansour, a freshman on the team. “We’ll have been part of the first group to try this.”
So, who do the Road Warriors believe will win the competition?
“We will,” said parent Cindy Jensen with confidence. “Of course.”
Team adviser Robertson was more cautious, echoing even DARPA’s own prediction that no team would likely claim the $1 million prize this year. Congress has allocated the award through 2007, and DARPA representatives said they plan to hold the event until there is a winner.
“These kids are part of the solution for tomorrow,” Robertson said, pointing at two freshmen intently dismantling the cowl over the Acura’s steering wheel. “By the time they graduate, there will be a winner — maybe even us.”