Government Technology - December 2007 - (Page 61)

When race day finally arrived, Axion was among 15 teams that qualified. On March 13, 2004, the Axion team steeled itself as their cobbled-together robot prepared to race nearly 150 miles to Nevada. The starter waved the flag, and the race was on. “We actually went negative miles,” Kehaly recalled good-naturedly. “We ended up behind that starting line.” The race was a disaster. No team came anywhere near the finish line. A vehicle built by a team from Carnegie Mellon University traveled the greatest distance — a paltry seven Axion searched for a better brain for Spirit, and in late 2006, it arrived in an unusual place — inside Sony’s new gaming console, the PlayStation 3 (PS3). The Cell Processor, an extremely powerful new microprocessor developed jointly by Sony, IBM and Toshiba, powers the PS3. At about $600 for a 60 GB model, the PS3 was a very high-end processor for not much money. Axion had found their new brain, now they needed an operating system. “As luck would have it, I recently stumbled upon Yellow Dog Linux [YDL] and figured “We actually went negative miles. We ended up behind that starting line.” Bill Kehaly, general manager, Axion In late October, Spirit seemed to perform well in the qualification event. The driverless Jeep was busy managing left turns through oncoming traffic, safely — and eerily — making the turns at the appropriate time. Some turns were close calls, but by and large, the robot appeared to be doing well. Unfortunately for the Axion team, however, DARPA judges eliminated the team from further competition. Axion, like 24 other teams, would not race in the main event — leaving just 11 teams to compete in November. After the qualification event, Kehaly was understandably unhappy. “I thought we did well,” he said. “The judges thought otherwise.” Transfer Technology You might wonder about the purpose of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Grand Challenge. It’s a good question to ask, given the time, money and manpower that goes into developing each robot. Tony Tether, director of DARPA, said the agency has two primary purposes for the autonomous vehicles. The ﬁrst, he said, is to facilitate the development of military vehicles that can support troops on the battleﬁeld. A supply vehicle that can drive itself through hostile environments would be tremendously advantageous considering the improvised explosive devices that soldiers in Iraq must constantly concern themselves with. Other military functions could include vehicles with mounted artillery that can position themselves without requiring a human driver. Tether added that DARPA hopes the Grand Challenge will encourage Americans to engage in science and engineering. Flagging interest in such studies is a growing concern, and Tether believes agencies like DARPA should do their part to foster interest and excitement. Civilian uses of autonomous vehicle technology are more numerous than might be immediately apparent. Aside from the dream of going to sleep while your car drives you to your destination, this technology is currently being used for things like lane tracking and automated highway systems. Many big rig trucks, for example, already employ lane departure systems that alert drivers if they appear to being driving erratically — a common situation for road-weary truckers. Jay Gowdy — principal software engineer of Cognex and part of Team Mojavaton, one of the Grand Challenge participants — said autonomous vehicle technology will be used to help humans and machines work better together, with the machines taking over many of the routine, repetitive tasks that can eventually hamper a human’s performance. “How can we partner up a machine that is very good at doing the same boring thing over and over again with a human who decides what boring thing for that machine to work on?” he said. 61 and a half miles. Many teams and observers said the course was largely to blame. The terrain was, they claim, exceedingly harsh in the first few miles. Regardless, the $1 million prize went unclaimed. But DARPA would later announce another race for 2005, this time on a new course and $2 million for the winner. 2005 and Now The 2005 race was a huge success compared to the year before. Several teams actually finished the race — the winner was Stanley, a vehicle built by a team from Stanford University. Stanley completed the race in just less than seven hours. Axion’s Jeep, named Spirit, made it 66 miles before becoming bogged down in a sandy stretch, ultimately finishing seventh. Kehaly was pleased with the performance but felt Spirit needed more intelligence. DARPA did not schedule a race in 2006. However, the agency announced an urban race for November 2007. This time, the cars would race on the streets of Victorville, Calif., instead of in the desert surrounding the city. we could convert one of our Dell servers into a hopped-up PS3 to do some processing,” Kehaly said. “I checked with the team during our weekly conference call. My team is great at [artificial intelligence] and we bought a copy of YDL and installed it on a PS3.” YDL is an open source operating system designed by Terrasoft Solutions to run on IBM Cell systems like the PlayStation 3. Axion already had success with Linux in the past, so this PS3-YDL combination was a perfect fit. They fitted the PS3 on the Dell server rack already in Spirit and started preparing for November. “I’ve been thinking about replacing our Dell servers with a cluster of PS3s,” Kehaly said, amused that a gaming and movie machine might be the key to winning the race. Giving credence to Kehaly’s idea of moving to a PS3 cluster, recent reports from the gaming industry have shown the PlayStation 3 has a failure rate of 0.02 percent — in other words, an astoundingly reliable machine — perfect for the cramped, hot and dirty world inherent to auto racing. And the Winner is A robot vehicle created by Tartan Racing of Pittsburgh crosses the ﬁnish line to win the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. Visit www.govtech.com for GTtv’s report on the 2007 race held in Victorville, Calif. PHOTO COURTESY OF DARPA http://www.govtech.com http://www.govtech.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Government Technology - December 2007

Government Technology - December 2007 Contents Point of View Big Picture Profile The Last Mile GT Spectrum Well...How Did We Get Here? Dark Spaces A Paler Shade of Green? Decertification Dilemma Game On Two Cents Products Signal:Noise

Government Technology - December 2007

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