DARPA “Urban Challenge” – autonomous ground vehicle competition

DARPA’s Urban Challenge – the third – was held last weekend; what’s DARPA’s Urban Challenge?

The DARPA Urban Challenge is an autonomous vehicle research and development program with the goal of developing technology that will keep warfighters off the battlefield and out of harm’s way. The Urban Challenge features autonomous ground vehicles maneuvering in a mock city environment, executing simulated military supply missions while merging into moving traffic, navigating traffic circles, negotiating busy intersections, and avoiding obstacles.

The program is conducted as a series of qualification steps leading to a competitive final event, scheduled to take place on November 3, 2007, in Victorville, California. DARPA is offering $2M for the fastest qualifying vehicle, and $1M and $500,000 for second and third place.

– snip –

What is an autonomous ground vehicle?

An autonomous ground vehicle is a vehicle that navigates and drives entirely on its own with no human driver and no remote control. Through the use of various sensors and positioning systems, the vehicle determines all the characteristics of its environment required to enable it to carry out the task it has been assigned.

Why develop autonomous vehicles?

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001, Public Law 106-398, Congress mandated in Section 220 that “It shall be a goal of the Armed Forces to achieve the fielding of unmanned, remotely controlled technology such that… by 2015, one-third of the operational ground combat vehicles are unmanned.” DARPA conducts the Urban Challenge program in support of this Congressional mandate. Every “dull, dirty, or dangerous” task that can be carried out using a machine instead of a human protects our warfighters and allows valuable human resources to be used more effectively.

Who are the teams?

The Urban Challenge teams come from across the United States and around the world, and share a passion for the advancement of robotic technology and machine intelligence. This diverse group includes teams from both academia and the robotics, automotive, and defense industries.

(It should be noted that at least some of these machines probably drive better than a substantial number of people who live in Brooklyn).

I’m sure that lots of good stuff will come out this DARPA project. But it’s interesting to watch Congress asserting itself with a demanding deadline in this project – we’re not hearing about Representatives and Senators banging their hands on hearing-room tables – demanding 100 mpg vehicles, better insulating materials, or field-deployable energy systems that will reduce the horrible risks associated with sending convoys out to pick up a truckload diesel.

The Urban Challenge main page;

John Markoff’s excellent piece in yesterday’sTimes. Markoff has been covering this process since at least 1984. In my less-than-methodical view of my hometown paper, Markoff’s byline means it’s going to be interesting – and often well ahead of the pack.

Here’s a Times

page with links to all of his recent work.

http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/teamlist.asp.

articles- 2nd plugin test

“But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?”

test alex king articles plugin

“Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit,

sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur?

s-sgt-bill-lisbon-usmc-8-9-04-soldiertech_sherpa1.jpg

Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?”

In Copenhagen Bicycles Overtake Cars (via EcoProfile and TreeHugger)

April Streeter has this in yesterday’s Treehugger:

As a result of half a century of planning, Copenhagen has achieved a fabulous cycling goal – during the morning rush hour more bikes and mopeds pound the inner city streets than personal cars and buses. Just a bit more than a third of inhabitants get to work by bike every day – the other two thirds take public transport or a personal car. But the news gets even better – Copenhagen’s municipal government is increasing spending to improve bike lanes and paths and the bike travel experience.According to this survey, Copenhagen is behind places such as Amsterdam (where a claimed 40 percent of traffic moves by bike) and Portland, Oregon in providing the best inner-city biking experience. This may be true, but Copenhagen has got to be the stylish bike capital – especially with the bloggers at copenhagengirlsonbikes and cycleliciousness making it look so cool to ride.

City officials now want to increase cyclists to make up half of all commuters by 2015, as well as increase cyclists’ speeds by 10 percent while reducing the risk of injury. How will they do it? Partly by investing more – they added about 25 million Danish crowns (US$ 3.7 million) in 2007 to the yearly budget of 75 million crowns.

Already in the city, subway stops and other open spaces sport large bicycle parking stalls – the best are the covered double-decker stalls – and the city will build even more of these to encourage cyclists to park away from pedestrian and other traffic. They’ll also widen lanes to accommodate more bikes.

In addition, some heavily-trafficked lanes will sport a new bicycle pictogram to show that they get a special ‘green wave’ – traffic lights will be coordinated so cyclists who maintain speeds of about 20 kilometers/hour can just keep on moving.

Across Öresund in Sweden cyclists are not quite so pampered, but some good things are happening – in Gothenburg cyclists will soon be able to use the same Internet service cars have long had access to to create individual bike destination maps for all locations in the city. Via ::Ecoprofile

In Copenhagen Bicycles Overtake Cars (TreeHugger)

Update: Colville Andersen – of cycleliciousness notes in a comment to TreeHugger:

Great post. Thanks for the big up about our blogs.
One thing, however, the “survey” you link to is not a survey at all… it’s a commercial website writing a opinion piece about bike cities, without any real research.
Love the treehugger world. Keep up the good work.

Infrastructure and Emergency Shelters

If every elementary school in the country had a Photovoltaic Solar system installed on the roof, then in a ‘Katirina like event’ each school would be an emergency shelter with power. If terrorists took one out, there’d be another one a short distance away.

Solar Panels work when the sun shines.

The money we are spending on the war in Iraq – currently estimated at $2.4 Trillion – would pay for about 370 gigawatts of PV Solar generating capacity, about 830 gigawatts of offshore wind electric capacity and about 1,200 gigawatts of land based wind capacity. (Solar is about $6.5 billion per gigawatt, offshore wind is about $2.89 per gigawatt, and land based wind is $2. billion per gw.)

Which would make this country more secure? The War in Iraq or an investment in sustainable energy?

Energy: Where do we go from here? Solar? Wind? Nuclear? Coal? Oil? Negawatts?

What do we do next? Solar? Wind? Nuclear? Coal? Oil? Negawatts?

Burning coal and oil create greenhouse gases and other pollutants. Nuclear power produces radioactive waste and a prodigious amount of heat pollution. Nuclear and fossil fuels require mines, mills or wells, and they are really bad for the environment, causing everything from pollution to global warming.

Negawatts makes sense. Hybrid cars get great gas mileage and offer a smooth, quiet, comfort. Every barrel of oil we don’t burn is better for our economy. Every barrel of oil we don’t buy from Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Venezuela is $80 or $90 or $100 that doesn’t go into the hands of people like Achmadinejad, Bandar, or Chavez. That’s good for us and bad for the terrorists.

Solar and Wind are not perfect. People complain that they don’t look pretty. But they create jobs not pollution. They help our national security infrastructure. And they look fine to me. I’d rather see solar panels on my roof and wind turbines on my horizon then global warming and my money going to thugs like Achmadinejad.

Ralph Blumenthal, NYT: Stalled Health Tests Leave Storm Trailers in Limbo

How much can FEMA get done in 19 months? It can not test trailers – occupied trailers – for formaldehyde, which it’s known about for that long.

Ralph Blumenthal follows up on this in the October 18th editions of The New York Times.

Three months after the Federal Emergency Management Agency halted the sale of travel trailers to survivors of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita over possible risks from formaldehyde and promised a health study, none of the 56,000 occupied units have been tested.

“It is inexcusable that 19 months after the first questions were raised, testing of occupied trailers has yet to begin,” – Representative Henry A. Waxman.

“It is inexcusable that 19 months after the first questions were raised, testing of occupied trailers has yet to begin,” said Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California and chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

At a Congressional hearing on the trailers in July, R. David Paulison, FEMA’s administrator, said the agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “are scheduled to begin Phase 1 of the study in the Gulf Coast next week.”

But the first teams did not reach New Orleans and Mississippi until the end of September, and then began only a baseline assessment of unoccupied trailers, laying the groundwork for the full-scale study, said a C.D.C. spokeswoman in Atlanta, Bernadette Burden.

One result of the delay in the testing is that the agency has postponed a plan to charge rent on the trailers beginning in March. The rent was intended to encourage people displaced by the hurricanes to move into nonsubsidized housing.

Before sales were halted over the safety questions, 10,839 of the trailers were auctioned off by the General Services Administration and 819 more were sold directly to occupants by the emergency agency from July 2006 to July 2007, raising potential liability issues.

“It’s different now,” an agency spokeswoman, Mary Margaret Walker, said. “The idea of asking people to pay rent for units with health concerns doesn’t seem to make sense.” She said the change had not been announced.

This week, the agency announced a program of relocation subsidies, up to $4,000 a household, to encourage storm victims to return home to the Gulf states or seek permanent housing elsewhere.

But problems with the trailers have dealt further setbacks to self-sufficiency efforts: 4,110 people living in FEMA trailers have asked to be relocated because of health concerns, the agency said. Among these, 771 have been moved to alternative housing, 546 have been given rent subsidies to live elsewhere and 83 have been moved back into hotels and motels at government expense. Continue reading →

International Herald Tribune: U.S. widens contract fraud inquiry to include military’s food suppliers

The International Herald Tribune reports that a company being paid $1 billion per year to provide meals in Iraq is under investigation for price-gouging. The company, formerly Public Warehousing, now Agility Logistics, appears to be so well-connected that ConAgra, Tyson Foods and Sara Lee were excluded from at least some business. (Scratch the surface here, I’m afraid, and we’ll find firms complaining – nominally – that other peole are stealing – when what they’re actually upset about is not the stealing – but the other people who are doing it.
Federal agents are investigating whether several large food companies charged the government excessively high prices for supplies to U.S. troops in Iraq and Kuwait, according to administration officials.Widening their previously disclosed inquiries into contract fraud and corruption in Kuwait and Iraq, investigators from the Justice and Defense departments are examining deals that Sara Lee, ConAgra Foods and other U.S. companies made to supply the military, officials said.

The inquiry centers on whether the companies overcharged Agility Logistics, a Kuwait-based company formerly named Public Warehousing that is the U.S. Army’s principal food supplier for the war zones. Investigators are also reviewing whether Agility Logistics improperly took payments from the food companies.

Agility Logistics, which supplies enormous amounts of fruits, vegetables and meats for more than 160,000 troops in combat zones, said in a statement that it had done nothing wrong and was fully cooperating with the investigation.

But a Justice Department lawyer, Brian Mizoguchi, told a Federal Claims Court judge in Washington on June 12 that the company’s business arrangements were the target of “a very large and active investigation into criminal fraud involving amounts in the hundreds of millions of dollars.” Continue reading →

James Glanz, NYT: “Iraqi Contracts With Iran and China Concern U.S.”

BAGHDAD, Oct. 17 — Iraq has agreed to award $1.1 billion in contracts to Iranian and Chinese companies to build a pair of enormous power plants, the Iraqi electricity minister said Tuesday. Word of the project prompted serious concerns among American military officials, who fear that Iranian commercial investments can mask military activities at a time of heightened tension with Iran.

– snip –

The Iraqi Electricity Ministry, which Mr. Wahid heads, is one of the few in the central government that has received praise for successfully spending much of the money allocated to it in the Iraqi budget for reconstruction projects. Because of security problems, a shortage of officials who are skilled at writing and executing contracts, and endemic corruption, many of the ministries have either left their rebuilding money unspent or poured it into projects that have had a marginal impact on the quality of life for Iraqi citizens.

One point here seems to be that the Iraqis are ungrateful and unreliable, and are encouraging our our competitors (China) and enemies (Iran), and and giving them footholds in Iraq. This may be so, and it may come at the expense of American contractors like Bechtel. My observations:

  • If Iran and China build or rebuild the power grid, isn’t likely that hey’ll start being blamed for its failures, now worse than it was under Saddam.
  • The essential strategic error of a centralized power brig remains. The only way to guarantee a relatively steady supplyy power is a heavily decentralized network, such as that proposed by the Naval Postgraduate School with its “Solar Eagle” proposal- essentially a solar array on each building in the country, connected to the grid. If what you need to keep going is some battery charging for flashlights, a referigator and fans. To attack the grid you need to attack every building. Which means that effectively attacking the power grid becomes much more difficult – maybe not worth doing.

Here’s our earlier post on “Solar Eagle:” One thing Texas has in common with Iraq – “Solar Eagle” – the Navy Plan to beat the insurgents and help Iraq go solar.    (The Times doesn’t appear to have noticed the “Solar Eagle” proposal – not surprising, in an environment with  to few people and not enought time – the proposal was to learn about except by accident).

Now back to our excerpt from James Glanz’s October 18th piece:

Asked how he had managed to make progress within the bureaucratic morass of much of the Iraqi government, Mr. Wahid said he had simply learned to go it alone. Aside from financing, his main need from the central government was guarantees that Iraqi security forces would protect his workers and the electricity infrastructure.

“Do not annoy me,” Mr. Wahid said was his main message to the government. “Let me do my work.” Continue reading →

Andrée de Jongh, 90, heroine of Belgian Resistance

My hometown paper, The New York Times, routinely publishes obituaries of people one has likely never heard of – but upon reading the obituary are glad the Times has written about them.  (I’ve heard bits and pieces about the editorial process by which the Times  identifies people, during their lifetimes, and keeps a “morgue” file – but I don’t know enough to explain it).  From their obituary of   Andrée de Jongh, of the Belgian resistance, who ran the “Comet” escape line for downed Allied fighters – so named because it was so fast.

Andrée de Jongh, whose youth and even younger appearance belied her courage and ingenuity when she became a World War II legend ushering many downed Allied airmen on a treacherous, 1,000-mile path from occupied Belgium to safety, died Saturday in Brussels. She was 90.

Her death was announced by a Web site for former resistance fighters, verzet.org. There was no information about survivors.

Derek Shuff, in his book ”Evader” (2007), told of three British crewmen whose bomber made a forced landing in 1941. They found their way to the Underground and were ensconced in a safe house when a slip of a young woman appeared.

”My name is Andrée,” the 24-year-old woman said, ”but I would like you to call me by my code name, which is Dédée, which means little mother. From here on I will be your little mother, and you will be my little children. It will be my job to get my children to Spain and freedom.”

She left and the three sat in stunned silence. One finally spoke. ”Our lives are going to depend on a schoolgirl,” he said.

Two of the men survived the grueling trek along what became known as the Comet escape line, because of the speed with which soldiers were hustled along it.

Ms. de Jongh eventually led 24 to 33 expeditions across occupied France, over the Pyrenees to Gibraltar. She herself escorted 118 servicemen to safety. At least 300 more escaped along the Comet line.

When the Germans captured her in 1943, it was her youth that saved her. When she truthfully confessed responsibility for the entire scheme, they refused to believe her.

The citation of her Medal of Freedom With Golden Palm, the highest award the United States presented to foreigners who helped the American effort in World War II, said Ms. de Jongh ”chose one of the most perilous assignments of the war.” Continue reading →

Majikthise : Hurricane Katrina

Journalist and photographer Lindsay Beyerstein has an excellent blog called MajikThise

. Here’s her account of encountering Blackwater personnnel while covering Katrina (internal links omitted):

The scariest people I’ve ever met were the Blackwater guys I found clustered around a van behind a New Orleans hotel shortly after Hurricane Katrina.I saw a lot of disconcerting things during those two weeks, but the one experience that haunts me two years later was a five-minute conversation that crew.

We’d already encountered a few other Blackwater guys during our trip. One juiced up freak in mirrored sunglasses and a Blackwater bearclaw t-shirt actually lunged at our car when my colleague tried to take a picture of the hotel he was guarding. He didn’t point his weapon or yell, or do anything a rational person in a defensive posture might have done. He just grunted really loudly and tried to stick his head in our window.

Mind you, he wasn’t holding a position in an emergency. We were driving in broad daylight through downtown New Orleans with a bunch of other traffic (military and civilian).

The Blackwater dude was acting as a glorified rent-a-cop on the sidewalk, about two blocks from the main media staging area for New Orleans, which was already amply secured by US military and law enforcement.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that these Blackwater guys thought of themselves as frontline soldiers in a literal war zone, ready to use deadly force at the slightest provocation. That was an unfounded estimate, in the middle of the day in downtown New Orleans several days after the city had been secured by the legitimate authorities. Continue reading →

Powerful Geospatial Suite of Free GIS

Mapz: a gis librarian  – a mysterious and anonymous GIS librarian, to boot – has a post which may well answer the question – what do underfunded and non-funded community-based groups do about their GIS needs.

In this post,  My Powerful Geospatial Suite of Free GIS , Mr. Mapz has a pretty impressive list of applications, about which he says:

These are the freely available applications and services that make up my own personal free GIS. Individually, many freely available applications do not of themselves constitute a full geographic information system, but when these are all pulled together within one suite of tools…Well, it is remarkable what someone can do without spending a cent. (And without needing to spend an enormous amount of time developing your own applications out of open source components or needing to learn, or install, complex applications, such as GRASS GIS.)

– snip –

For a more comprehensive freeware software list, see FreeGIS.org.

Mapz also points to a more exhaustive list of resources of desktop GIS applications, including not-free software, at this link on Very Spatial.

The GIS/map piece of the planning function is, without question, critical. There are two barriers, I think – cost and learning curve – that prevent community-based groups from doing more. This is especially true in communities where local government isn’t supporting community planning and response: it’s hard to get to thinking about a steep learning curve when you’re worried that your municipality is slacking on basic safety issues and you’re trying to persuade your neighbors to buy flashlights.

Jonathan Crowe: how the USGS really does it – or, why the USGS is a little like the O.E.D.

The Supreme Being in Time Bandits had Randall, Fidgit, Strutter, Og, Wally and Vermin. ((See alsoWikipedia entry about Time Bandits

for, among other things, theory that Terry Gilliam meant the Bandits to represent the Pythons.)) Jonathan Crowe of Map Room now brings us the new that the

The United States Geological Survey’s National Map makes use of a corps of volunteers, who are assigned a given area (a USGS quad) and report the names and coordinates of various map features, such as schools, town halls and other facilities, and any changes thereto. The sorts of things that aerial surveys might reveal, but not necessarily identify. Sounds interesting — something a dedicated individual with spare time and a GPS might have a lot of fun doing, akin to what OpenStreetMap volunteers are doing in the UK. (U.S. geographic data is in the public domain, so this may well be the next best thing.) Via Very Spatial

and Catholicgauze.

Maproom post here .

Another example of the amazing thing that can be done by volunteers – and by distributed and coordinated teams of people.
The United States Geological Survey’s National Map makes use of a corps of volunteers, who are assigned a given area (a USGS quad) and report the names and coordinates of various map features, such as schools, town halls and other facilities, and any changes thereto. The sorts of things that aerial surveys might reveal, but not necessarily identify. Sounds interesting — something a dedicated individual with spare time and a GPS might have a lot of fun doing, akin to what OpenStreetMap volunteers are doing in the UK. (U.S. geographic data is in the public domain, so this may well be the next best thing.) Via Very Spatial and Catholicgauze.