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Skynet in action
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Team Cornell at the final awards ceremony |
Team Cornell proves it is up to the DARPA challenge, making final six
The DARPA Urban Challenge was held on November 3, 2007, at the former George AFB in Victorville, Calif. Building on the success of the 2004 and 2005 Grand Challenges, this event required teams to build an autonomous vehicle capable of driving in traffic, performing complex maneuvers such as merging, passing, parking and negotiating intersections. This event was truly groundbreaking as the first time autonomous vehicles have interacted with both manned and unmanned vehicle traffic in an urban environment.
Team Cornell's "Skynet," a converted Chevy Tahoe named for the AI in the Terminator movies, was one of only 11 vehicles out 35 initial entries selected for the final test, where cars carried out three simulated military-supply missions in an urban setting. Five of those were eliminated during the first mission. All six remaining cars performed amazingly, completing about 55 miles on city streets, merging with and passing each other as well as cars driven by actual people. But in the end, said Mark Campbell, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and one of the team's faculty advisers, it came down to time. "Our first mission ran quite well, but we had some throttle problems, which slowed us down the last two missions," he explained.
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"It was certainly a student-led project. Many of the key team members have been working on vehicle automation since the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2005, and it was the dedication of returning team members that made this success possible. Many students postponed graduation, taking a semester off, and one even quit his high-paying job in industry to come back and work for the team for little money. They are a zealous group of students who routinely worked 16 hour days, seven days a week. It has been a pleasure to watch then mature as engineers." - Prof. Ephrahim Garcia |
AboutThe Project:
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Skynet finishing the last of its missions
during the final event
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The robots faced several challenges while completing their missions; the same challenges that an adolescent might face during his driving test. Robots had to wait their turn at intersections, maintain safe following distances behind other vehicles, pass cautiously and only where appropriate, merge into traffic moving in both directions, and even park in designated parking spaces. Call it what you like, but to me it seems clear that DARPA is pushing harder than ever for a supply operation run entirely by robots. And not a moment too soon, considering a recent Congressional mandate insisting that a large chunk of US ground vehicles be unmanned by 2015. Setting defense ideology aside, the DARPA challenges have dragged the field of robotics and its close relatives into the 21st century by forcing new partnerships between industry sponsors and university research and development, all on DARPA’s fast-paced rapid development schedule, and all squarely in the limelight of public attention. - Isaac Miller, Ph.D. candidate |
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The students built the autonomous elements of the car pretty much from scratch, Prof. Mark Campbell said, including designing and building a drive-by-wire system and a sensor network, in contrast to several other entrants who used off-the-shelf designs or custom designs from industrial partners. Also, he said, "we had a good [software] solution. There were some elements only we were doing in terms of tracking other vehicles." The software, he explained, fused the output of lasers, radar and vision to do "probabilistic tracking." The system not only pays attention to where other vehicles are, but tries to predict where they may be going and can deal with such things as a vehicle that is momentarily hidden from sight. The Cornell AI drew compliments from the professional stunt drivers hired to drive the approximately 50 other cars that provided realistic traffic during the missions. "Several of them said our car drove more like a human than a robot," Prof. Dan Huttenlocher recalled. "Very smooth and very predictable." - Bill Steele, Cornell Chronicle |
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Skynet undergoing a few last minute fixes while in
the pit at the final event
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Line-up of the 11 finalist vehicles for the Urban Challenge; the picture is signed by all Team Leaders and DARPA officials |
In the eyes of most of DARPA, the participants, and of the commentators, the event was a spectacular success. The ultimate goal for many of the scientists and engineers who designed and built the autonomous vehicles is to dramatically increase the level of safety in automotive traffic. In fact, about 40,000 people die as a result of traffic accidents each year in the United States alone; motor-vehicle accidents are the most likely cause of death for US persons between three and 33 years of age. Rather than accepting these statistics, technology is maturing at a point were it can help reduce this death toll – for example by increasing a driver’s awareness, proactively avoiding dangerous situations, or assisting the driver in emergency conditions. Even though much remains to be done, for example to improve the situational awareness of the vehicles, their ability to interpret the wealth of sensory information, and especially to infer other driver’s intentions, the accomplishments of the teams at the Challenge demonstrate that the goal of cars that drive autonomously in traffic, efficiently and safely, is perhaps closer than what we could have imagined just a few months ago. - Isaac Miller, Ph.D. candidate
Team Cornell:
Team Leaders: Mark Campbell, Dan Huttenlocher
Other Faculty: Ephrahim Garcia, Bart Selman, Hod Lipson, Mark Psiaki
Project Manager: Pete Moran
Vehicle Automation: Noah Zych
Vehicle Packaging: Noah Zych, Pete Moran
Mechanical and Systems Support: Jason Wong
Pose: Isaac Miller, Brian Schimpf
Sensors and Data Network: Aaron Nathan, Sergei
Lupashin, Jason Catlin, Adam Shapiro, Max Reitmann
Localization: Isaac Miller
Scene Estimation: Isaac Miller
Operational Planning: Brian Schimpf
Tactical and Strategic Planning: Frank-Robert Kline, Hikaru Fujishima
Testing and RNDF support: Mike Kurdziel
Links
Isaac Millers Blog
http://cudgc.blogspot.com/
YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HacG_FWWPOw
Darpa Grand Challenge
http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/
Team Cornell
http://www.cornellracing.com/
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