Newsgroup: it.discussioni.auto.mod
Titolo: [press] tartan racing

http://www.tartanracing.org/
Un articolo preso a caso:
San Francisco Chronicle
SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY
Robots, start your engines
6 driverless cars finish tough race testing speed, innovations
(11-04) 04:00 PST Victorville (San Bernardino County) --
A robotic car named Junior, programmed by Stanford computer scientists, 
finished slightly ahead of Boss, the robo-vehicle from Carnegie Mellon 
University, as half a dozen driverless vehicles made history by 
completing a 60-mile race over a city-like environment.
But the real winner of this third and most difficult in a series of 
robo-races is probably the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, 
which sponsored the first of these events in 2004 to spur development 
of unmanned military vehicles. In all, 11 robotic vehicles set out on 
the race course Saturday morning, and while five scrubbed out for 
various reasons, the fact that six driverless vehicles drove a delivery 
route seems like a win for innovation. No car finished in the first 
race in 2004.
DARPA officials were huddled in a temporary building on a 
decommissioned Air Force base here where they had to clear 10 miles of 
roads to create a race course designed to simulate a town - challenging 
the 11 robotic vehicles that took off about 8 a.m. The participants 
were tasked with completing a long series of simulated deliveries in 
under six hours.
Given that both the finish time and adherence to traffic laws are 
criteria for winning, it is possible that the Carnegie Mellon team - 
which lost to Stanford by a hair in the 2005 competition - could emerge 
the final victor once the traffic-law results are compiled.
Indeed, once the infractions are added to the tally, it is possible 
that Odin, the third robo-car to cross the finish line, could emerge 
victorious, which would please many of the roughly 2,000 spectators who 
cheered the Virginia Tech team that kept their focus despite the tragic 
shootings at their Blacksburg campus in the spring.
However the final tally turns out, all three early finishers will walk 
away with more than the glory of being part of this milestone in the 
development of artificial intelligence: DARPA will award $2 million for 
first place, $1 million for second and $500,000 for third.
Stanford computer scientists Sebastian Thrun, who engineered last 
year's victory with programming leader Mike Montemerlo, talked up the 
achievement as cheering supporters shouted "Junior! Junior" as the Bay 
Area car crossed the finish line.
"Two robots have made it back through 60 miles of urban traffic," Thrun 
said as the first two cars crossed the line. "They made history."
At the Carnegie Mellon tent, team leader William "Red" Whittaker, who 
lost graciously to Stanford in 2005, reminded a questioning reporter 
that Boss had started its delivery route at least 20 minutes behind 
Junior yet was much closer at the finish line.
Meanwhile, the Virginia Tech computer science students behind Odin 
counted their blessings irrespective of finishing position Saturday, 
saying that the day before the spring massacre their team of 90 
undergraduates and graduates had been scheduled to use the same room in 
which many of the deaths occurred.
"We think about it every day," Chris Terwelp, a 28-year-old member of 
the Virginia Tech team.
Three other robo-vehicles also finished the 60-mile delivery route but 
it is not known whether they completed their simulated tasks within the 
six-hour period that DARPA mandated, and so may not finish in the 
money.
In order across the line they were Ben from the University of 
Pennsylvania and Lehigh University, Talos from MIT, and Skynet from 
CornellUniversity.
Earlier in the day, the MIT and Cornell cars were involved in a mild 
fender-bender after Talos tried to pass Skynet, initiating a collision 
of uncertain blame. But about 20 minutes later, DARPA officials decided 
that neither robo-car had sustained damage to any of the critical 
sensors that guided all the vehicles and let them proceed, although the 
assignment of blame will count against the offending robo-car's finish 
time.
Sensors were a subtle yet vitally important story here, as the whole 
point of Saturday's exercise was to prod computer scientists to develop 
electronic systems that can mimic the magic of the human eye, and then 
control the car's drive systems.
In this sensor competition, the clear winner was Velodyne, a Morgan 
Hill company run by brothers David and Bruce Hall, who developed a 
non-visual detection system that they sold as a steering input to five 
of the six teams finishing the race. The system, conceived by 
engineering genius David Hall, uses a spinning ball that shoots out 64 
lasers up to 300 feet and computes how long it takes the light to 
bounce back, painting an outline of the road ahead at speeds of 30 
miles per hour or more.
Despite the ebullience over the successful finishes, it is sobering to 
realize that many vehicle sensors were prone to dust confusion, so much 
so that when the cars returned, as required, for delivery instructions 
that were uploaded by computer, teams of students with rags raced to 
dust off the sensors before sending the robo-cars back out on the road.
E-mail Tom Abate at 
tab...@sfchronicle.com
.
This article appeared on page B - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

 ha scritto nel messaggio 
news:mn.2a707d7b4...@tin.it...
Al "Darpa grandchallenge" ha partecipato anche un team "italiano"... La 
particolarità della loro avventura deriva dal tipo di mezzo utilizzato, un 
truck Oshkosh di notevoli dimensioni e inadatto alla circolazione stradale 
(ma più interessante dal punto di vista "tattico").
http://www.terramax.com/
La loro avventura purtroppo si è interrotta per un problema tecnico dopo 
aver superato la fase "eliminatoria"
http://www.terramax.com/media/team_log.cfm
Ora vi chiederete perchè ho parlato di team "italiano"...
La parte relativa alla "guida automatica" è stata sviluppata dai ragazzi del 
vislab (
http://vislab.it/
), il reparto di visione artificiale 
dell'università di Parma.
http://vislab.it/uc/index.php
Il vislab è già da anni che si cimenta con la guida automatizzata e nel 2001 
(mi pare) dimostrarono come si poteva portare in giro per l'Italia 
(percorsero mille miglia) una Lancia Thema che guidava da sola, realizzando 
il tutto con hardware generico
http://www.argo.ce.unipr.it/ARGO/italian/index.html
 

engineering genius David Hall, uses a spinning ball that shoots out 64 
questa e' gente che in casa ha le porte larghe 2 metri, perche' da
quelle standard di 90cm non ci passa con la testa.
saluti.
-- 
Gianni Rondinini (32, tanti, RA)
Nikon user - Bmw driver
http://www.giannirondinini.com
http://bugbarbeq.deviantart.com
"Oh, my goodness!"