...Favian Morales GS1140 Tuesday 7:20pm Instructor K. Fitch October 7, 2014 The DARPA project The DARPA headquarters was founded the year of 1958 in Arlington, Virginia by our very own president Dwight D Eisenhower. They have a total of 240 employees, and has an annual budget of 2.8 billion. DARPA stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. That is not the information I want to bring to your attention. The information I want you to know is about the DARPA challenge (The driverless car). From what I researched, the purpose of this vehicle is to travel into disasters that human engineering couldn’t bear to enter. The driverless vehicle must perform thee various tasks: 1. Drive a utility vehicle at the site.2. Travel dismounted across rubble.3. Remove debris blocking an entryway.4. Open a door and enter a building.5. Climb an industrial ladder and traverse an industrial walkway.6. Use a tool to break through a concrete panel.7. Locate and close a valve near a leaking pipe.8. Connect a fire hose to a standpipe and turn on a valve. I personally think it is impossible to build, for the simple fact that I would not even know where to start. While writing this essay, I was thinking of ways to engineer such a vehicle. I couldn’t come up with no analysis to such a challenge, then it hit me. What was said in the article I what Mr. Fitch been teaching us all along. The lesson of the original challenge [DARPA Grand Challenge - driverless cars] is that persistence pays....
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...DARPA Challenge The define problem in this challenge is building an autonomous vehicle capable of traversing 175 miles off road in the desert in less than 10 hours. There are many major problems and obstacles in this challenge that could happen. There can be over heating in the electrical equipment and the engines, and also traction control. Also some obstacles that could be faced are some landscape problems such as all the sand and dirt in the desert, also traction control can be an issues. The group thinks that speed limit you would need to go to complete the course in the allotted time would range from 20mph to 30mph. In consideration you would also have to think about the course and its problems. Such as all the wild life that the vehicle would come across, also anther thing to think about is all the stops and turns in the route and the conditions of the landscape. In this challenge the vehicle wouldn’t be going a constant speed, so you would have to keep that in mind. Some strategies to avoid problems and obstacles that you can take to mind is modifying your vehicle by putting four wheel drive, cooling systems for all the electronics that produce heat, putting in a GPS system, putting in sensors and cameras also reducing the weight of the vehicle. The disadvantages of the route information that we would be receiving would be no exact route. The route would be in the middle of the desert so there for there are no roads. Anther disadvantage is the vehicle is only limited...
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...human input. It is a project developed by Google Company that involves the development of technology in automated vehicles mostly the electric type of vehicles. The software responsible for the management of the vehicle in its operations is the Google chauffeur. The project is under the management of a Google engineer Sebastian Thrun. He is an experienced engineer who previously worked for the former director in the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. In addition, he previously worked as a co-inventor of the Google Street view. The development of the robotic vehicle was first showcased in 2005 in the DARPA Grand Challenge where it won the award. There was an able team of 15 engineers who developed the system in collaboration with the Google Company. Some included Chris Urmson, Mike Montemerlo and lastly Anthony Levandowski, involved in the DARPA Grand and Urban Challenges (Thrun, 2010). In the technological point of view, the automated Google vehicles comprise of parts and equipment that are worth 150000 dollars inclusive of the 70000 dollars for the LiDAR system. It possesses a range finder strategically placed on the top part of the vehicle called the Velodyne 64-beam type of laser. The purpose of the laser is to allow the vehicle to be in a position to generate a comprehensive 3D map of its surrounding. The vehicle takes the generated maps and puts them together with the high-resolution maps making them produce various types of models of data that allows the automated...
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...Accidents happen every day, which consists of terrifying situations in an individual’s life and there are hundreds or thousands of accidents involving automobiles. A known fact is that most number of people has no survivals as they do not get to hospital in time after their car accident. The 2010 national Automobile census, mentioned that more than 90% of reported accidents were caused by driver and less than 10% was due to outside or car problems. As the advances of technology increases, so does the danger to people. This is due to there being production of faster cars that are more powerful, therefore increasing the chances of danger. The famous futurist Norman Bell Geddes said that “Your grandchildren will snap across the entire continent in 24 hours on a new kind of highway and in a new kind of driverless car that is controlled by the push of a button," Some say his idea was what inspired the creation of the Interstate Highway System. Few years ago, the driverless cars were seen as just science fiction, an imagination that was only accomplished in movies and novels. However it is close to being a reality that will be soon experienced. Currently, technology is so close, as our cars are technologically advanced enough to be able steer themselves. Moreover, the cars can also accelerate and brake to sustain a safe driving distance from any cars ahead and also detect and avoid crashes with other cars on all the sides. With this much technology advancement, making the cars...
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...Google’s driverless car 1. What is it? The Google Driverless Car is a project by Google that involves developing technology for driverless cars. The innovative technology latest product is a fully automated car that does not require a human driver. The modified cars' most noticeable feature is a rotating sensor on the roof that scans 360 degrees for more than 200 feet in diameter, creating a 3D map of the car's location. A sensor on the left rear wheel measures the car's movements in detail and helps locate it on the map. A video camera on the windshield near the rearview mirror finds pedestrians, bicyclists, traffic lights and obstacles in the rod and sends that data to the car's onboard computer. Radar sensors at front and back help locate more distant objects. A GPS receiver, a laser range finder and an inertial motion sensor complete the package. This unique car really drives by himself. All you need is to tell the place where you going and it will deliver you there safer, environmentally and economically better than the regular driver with the car. 2. Target customer- who will use it? The target consumers of this product could be all of the people through thought the world. The main key point of Driverless Car that it could reduce the traffic jams and car accidents, moreover it could significantly decrease consumption of fuel and contamination of environment. That is why the clients of such a beneficial innovation potentially could be everybody...
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...Essay A driverless car, also known as a self-driving car is an autonomous car which can perform the actions of the human being, as if a man were driving a traditional car. We can say that the car is independent of the human as the car only needs to be programmed with the destination. The mechanical part of the vehicle is held by the car its own. Moreover, to function, the car has some specific technology, for example laser, radar, GPS and computer vision. An example of an approved case of self-driving cars can be Google’s. In 2011 the state of Nevada was the first jurisdiction in the United States to pass a law concerning the operation of driverless cars. This law was turned into effect by March 2012 and the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles gave the first license for a self-driven car in May 2012. This license was given to Google’s car which was in this case a Toyota Prius. Google got involved with this issue as it is trying to develop technology for driverless vehicles. In addition, the project is currently being led by Google engineer Sebastian Thrun, director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and the co-inventor of Google Street View. To develop this system, Google also had to hire 15 engineers. This topic about self-driving cars involves also other issues such as hardware and software, social and ethical issues and the social impact. As regards hardware and software involved, it integrates Google Maps with various hardware sensors and artificial...
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...Unit 1 Assignment1: DARPA Challenge 1. How would you define this problem? What are the major problem components, and what obstacles do you foresee? -Finding a way to operate through an unknown course with no interaction by the builders. Weather, equipment failure and unknown terrain changes could all become obstacles that will hinder the ability to finish the race on time. 2. How fast do you need to go to complete the course in the allotted time? -An average speed of 17.5 MPH would be acceptable. Top speed should be somewhere around 50 MPH if conditions are good enough to do so. 3. What is the fallacy of considering the above average speed – what do you need to consider? -Exceeding above a nice steady speed of 17.5 MPH places more risks with unknown weather and road conditions. You would need to consider the forecast for the day and road conditions to match. 4. What strategies can you use to avoid obstacles -Radar, GPS, cameras to detect obstacles around the vehicle and Ladar. 5. What are some disadvantages of the route information you receive, in terms of the vehicle driving the route? -Not knowing the distance between 1 GPS location and the other, and not knowing if the coordinates given are going in a straight path or curving off to one side or the other. 6. What strategies can you use to prepare your vehicle for the route once you receive the information? -If possible the best thing to do would be to try and pre-determine what path the vehicle is taking...
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...road, which is very useful in planning a path to the desired destination. Google’s self-driving car is any in a range of autonomous cars, developed by Google X as part of its project to develop technology for mainly electric cars. The software installed in Google's cars is called Google Chauffeur. Lettering on the side of each car identifies it as a "self-driving car". The project was formerly led by Sebastian Thrun, former director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and co-inventor of Google Street View. Thrun's team at Stanford created the robotic vehicle Stanley which won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge and its US$2 million prize from the United States Department of Defense. The team developing the system consisted of 15 engineers working for Google, including Chris Urmson, Mike Montemerlo, and Anthony Levandowski who had worked on the DARPA Grand and Urban Challenges. In 2009 the driverless Audi TTS set a new world speed record for...
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...Shannon Califf GS1140 Problem Solving DARPA Challenge 1. The problem is that you have to build a vehicle that can travel through the desert in less than 10 hours. One major problem is that you have a very short period of time to build something that you don’t even know will work. Another major problem that we can foresee is that we have no idea what this course looks like at all 2. The speed at which you would have to travel to complete the course in ten hours would be 17.5 mph 3. The fallacy is that you will probably not run this course all the way through without stopping. There are many reasons why are vehicle could stop like mechanical reasons or terrain reasons or are vehicle could even go the wrong way. 4. One major strategy we could use to avoid obstacles is install a camera on the vehicle so we know where it’s navigating as its driving. We could also install lights on the car for areas that are dark. The third thing we could do is to make sure we do our best at figuring out the path our vehicle will be taking. 5. Some disadvantages are that we don’t know if the GPS points are equidistant or how far apart they are. We also don’t know where on the path these points are or if they are in the center or off in a ditch somewhere. We also don’t know if the points are making up a curve or something else. 6. Some strategies we could use is to try and map everything out, make sure we know exactly which path our vehicle is taking...
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