March 26, 2004
Darpa wrap up
There is a fairly good wrap up of the darpa event over at http://www.xlogs.net/. One thing I didn't know was that the contestants were forced to go at 25 miles an hour. Clearly they would have gone further if they be allowed to go slower.
Most of the robots used some combination of radar, ladar (a laser used to measure distance), stereovision, and the global positioning system (GPS) for guidance. GPS can tell the robot where it is, but not much else. Radar picks out the moving obstacles (other robots, or perhaps real traffic); lasers scan the route ahead, assessing the terrain every few feet. Stereovision on the move is not a simple problem, and sensors with a "steady cam" effect can help when things are bouncing around.
Unfortunately while most of these things work ok at slow speeds they have a tendancy of not working to well at higher speeds.
http://www.plastic.com/article.html;sid=04/03/18/21331292
Posted by Anthony at March 26, 2004 01:46 PM | TrackBack