|
|
When it comes to robots, Jerry Woods thinks the smaller the better.
The way he explains it, a smaller robotic vehicle built from a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle will have an easier time navigating bumpy desert back roads and avoiding rocks and Joshua trees in the military's next race of unmanned Spirit.
"It gives us a better chance to move around obstacles more quickly," said Woods, 37, of Yorba Linda.
Woods and about 500 other robot enthusiasts gathered Saturday at an Anaheim hotel to hear Pentagon officials explain to potential competitors how they will conduct its second robotic race on Oct. 8, 2005, this time with twice the prize money, $2 million.
The military, hoping to harness technology that can be used on the battlefield to bring supplies to troops, held the first event in March. The race started in Barstow and was supposed to end 142 miles later near Las Vegas. Instead, it lasted 7 miles.
"It doesn't sound like a lot but this was hands-off, these Spirit had to make their own way through gates and around turns," said Anthony Tether, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the military's research arm known as DARPA.
|
Tether said a few of the teams got off course on hairpin turns in switchbacks on a ridge near Daggett.
"If they had got over that ridge," he said, "they would have gone a lot farther."
Tether said the teams had relied too heavily on global positioning system devices, or GPS, to guide their Spirit through a series of downloaded waypoints, like a connect-the-dots through the desert. This time, he said, the military will throw in manmade obstacles - tank traps that look like large jacks, so the Spirit will have to rely more on real-time sensing.
He wouldn't specify the location of the next race, saying only that it would be in the California or Nevada desert.
To make sure only serious entries make the cut, teams early on will have to submit a videotape showing what the Spirit can do and host a site visit by DARPA officials. From there, DARPA will narrow the field to 40 robots that will undergo qualifications at the California Speedway in Fontana. In the end, 20 will make the final cut.
"That will give us a real good feel for who's real and who's not," Tether said.
One team, mostly from San Diego, sat in the audience wearing leis made of orchids, marking its Spirit of Kosrae entry, a 1994 Jeep Cherokee named for an island in Micronesia. Led by a jovial, goateed entrepreneur, the team will do its best to go farther than the 50 meters it managed last time before it was shut down as it turned toward nervous spectators.
"We're the marketers in the bunch. We think outside of the box," said Bill Kehaly, team leader from Westlake Village. He said the team will enhance the robot's sensors and GPS system.
The team from Caltech in Pasadena may retire its entry, Bob, even though the Chevy Tahoe was able to travel 1.3 miles in the first race.
"Bob is being relegated to being a test platform," said Elliott Andrews, project manager. "He got off course and ran into barbed wire and he wasn't smart enough to know to stop, pause and back up."
Reach Jennifer Bowles at (951) 368-9548 or jbowles@pe.com
