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Rollin' Rollin' Rollin'
Jeff gets a roving no-prize for bringing us news of DARPA's latest technology challenge:
On Saturday, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon's few-holds-barred research and development arm, will award $1 million to the first team whose robotic vehicle can cover a rugged desert course from Barstow, Calif., to Primm, Nev., in less than 10 hours.The vehicles cannot be controlled remotely. They've got to navigate all by themselves.
There are apparently lots of people who think nobody will make it at all the first time out, in which case it seems they'll do it again in 2 years. The Mars Rovers are certainly smart enough to do this sort of thing, but they're nowhere near fast enough. The software they use is, however, public domain. I wonder if any of the contestants are using it?
Excuse my ignorance, as I'm not as up on the Mars Rovers as I would like to be, but: aren't the rovers at least partially remote-controlled? I seem to recall that they had to give commands for each series of moves to the rovers. Of course, it could be that they are simply told to head to a certain location and work out the way themselves, in which case... "never mind!"
Posted by: Steve Gigl on March 10, 2004 12:55 PMYup, that's generally the way I've understood they work. The round trip for commands between Earth and Mars is measured in minutes (4-8, I think), so real-time control simply isn't possible. AFAIK, it's a "see that ridge? Go there! Call us back in 30!" sort of setup.
Posted by: Scott on March 10, 2004 01:49 PM