Philosophy 101 Unit 1

In class on Tuesday we watched a documentary on DARPA’s Grand Challenge event back in 2005.  DARPA stands for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.  DARPA is an agency of the United States Department of Defense whose job is for the development of new technology for use by the military.  In order to research new technologies DARPA created an event where teams were challenged to have a driver-less vehicle, one that is not controlled by a remote or any type of human control.  It must be able to navigate unknown terrain on its own based solely off the construction of input devices and difficult programming.  The wining team would receive $2 million dollars.  The first grand challenge took place in 2004 and was set on a 150 mile route through the Mojave Desert.  There was no winner in this contest with the best vehicle traveling not even seven and half miles.  DARPA held the contest again in 2005 with much better results.  All but one of the 23 finalists in the 2005 race surpassed the 7.36 mile distance completed by the best vehicle in the 2004 race.  Five vehicles successfully completed the race.  First place taken by “Stanley”, built by Stanford University.  Second and third places were filled by Carnegie Mellon University with “Sandstorm” and “Highlander” respectively.

The vehicles in DARPA’s grand challenge where designed to be driver-less vehicles.  The main way that the driver-less vehicles were designed were with the following criteria in mind:

• sensors: the car knows where an obstacle and other things that are around it
• navigation: how to get to the target location (i.e. the finish like) from the starting location;
• motion planning: getting through the next few meters, steering, and avoiding obstacles while also abiding by rules of the road and avoiding harm to the vehicle and others;
• control of the vehicle itself: actuating the system’s decisions.

In fact some people have argued that the problem is strong-AI, that a safe, reliable driver-less car would need to use all the skills of a human being, including commonsense and affective computing.  The concern is that driver-less cars will not be able to preform as well as human beings in emergency situations that require judgement and the ability to communicate with other drivers and police.  For example, how should a driver-less car react to a person waving a flare in the middle of the road?  Should it just avoid the person and treat it as an obstacle??  Will it just stop as the roadway is blocked???  These questions are the ones that require the strong-AI systems.  Yet, strong-AI has not been created yet.  Machines cannot act as humans and will have difficulty in these situations.  It is basically an impossible task to create a computer system that can account for all the unknowns while driving a vehicle.  People and bicycles can dart onto the street, animals run across roadways, and being a native of Chicagoland, fellow motorists will always do something completely unexpected, potentially dangerous, and usually inherently stupid.  Can a computer with AI be expected to account for these random, unpredictable events?  I believe the answer to be no.  Technology does not allow computers to behave in this fashion.  So while autonomous vehicles are fun for the races, they do not seem to be at the point where they are practicial.  Currently the best option for a driver-less vehicle would be controlling one by remote control, but that technology has limitations as well.

"Boss" Carnegie Mellon's 2007 Grand Challenge Winner

The 2007 Grand Challenge was another step forward in creating an urban race style versus the desert track DARPA used back in the 2005 race.  The course involved a 60-mile urban area course, to be completed in less than 6 hours.  The major rules including to obey all traffic regulations while negotiating with other traffic and obstacles and merging into traffic.  The 2007 Grand Challenge winner was “Boss”, a collaborative effort by Carnegie Mellon University and General Motors Corporation.  “Boss” won the 60 mile race in just over 4 hours with an average speed of 14 miles an hour.  Coming in second this year was Stanford University’s vehicle “Junior”.  A strong rivalry is present beween both Carnegie Mellon and Stanford with the two teams switching places.  Anyway one is to look at it though, it just shows how advanced technology is becoming and that the future holds amazing machines that will be able to preform tasks that will continue to make them ever closer to humans.

Reminders:

Post 2 due Thursday night @ midnight

Screening this Thursday at 9pm in the main lounge. Film TBA.

Use this thread to talk about the movie today, The Great Robot Race. Also, here’s the website for the 2007 Urban Grand Challenge. Any substantive comments you make in this thread about the robot race will count towards your comments.

Also,