
A Pentagon-funded contest spawned many of today’s self-driving startups - TrickyRick
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-10-30/it-s-been-10-years-since-robots-proved-they-could-drive
======
aresant
Keeping up with Darpa's challenges is a good way to see into the future a
couple of their current projects:

1) A machine-learning competition to overcome scarcity in the radio frequency
which is INSANELY fascinating and, if they pull it off, hugely impactful ->
[https://spectrumcollaborationchallenge.com](https://spectrumcollaborationchallenge.com)

2) A program to build technology to drive “swarm sprint” exercises to inform
tactics and technologies for large groups of unmanned air and ground robots in
urban environments. Yes, like how do we build a collaborative air drone army.

And PS they are having a hacker fest in the bay in a couple of weeks,
registration is closed but bet you can get in if you email via -
[https://darpahackfest.com](https://darpahackfest.com)

~~~
vkou
The technologies that will be developed in #2 will be absolutely,
unquestionably used by governments to repress their own people.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _The technologies that will be developed in #2 will be absolutely,
> unquestionably used by governments to repress their own people_

One can go to the dawn of self-driving cars, the Internet, really any
potentially game-changing technology, and throw this out. It's an
inconsequential assertion that provokes no follow-on thought. Just emotion.

Graduating this seed from FUD to a chain of critical thought involves asking
how the technology in question might evolve detrimentally and what we can do,
today and specifically, preferably in a technical capacity, to mitigate that
risk.

~~~
vlehto
Anything that increases the destructive capacity of armed forces while
lowering the manpower requirements is going to make it easier for politicians
to misuse those armed forces.

Most obvious example would be the Vietnam disaster. It was eventually shut
down because of "bring our boys home". Not because of international
reputation, human rights violations or the capability to win or lose the war.

Another example would be how Germany used mechanized forces and air power in
the start of WWII as force multipliers. Without sophisticated war machines,
attacking France and Great Britain would have been suicidal. Simply because
they combined matched German population.

The best bet to mitigate such technology? In those examples it was probably
MANPAD that killed helicopter cavalry after Vietnam war. And evolutionary
steps of Bazooka helped to keep west Europe from soviet tank invasion during
cold war. Those specific inventions increased the manpower requirement while
adding relatively small and very specific firepower advantage.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Anything that increases the destructive capacity of armed forces while
> lowering the manpower requirements is going to make it easier for
> politicians to misuse those armed forces_

Anything that (a) improves peoples' lives and (b) has a logistical dependency,
_e.g._ requires or becomes better with electricity, an Internet connection,
package delivery, _et cetera_ , improves the standing of a centralized power.
This will be true as long as those logistical dependencies are subject to
economies of scale.

Leaving society in the 18th century, before electricity, antibiotics or daily
disposable contact lenses, wasn't easy. But you'd have to give up fewer
luxuries to do that then that you would today because _there are more luxuries
today_.

This is why saying "this will be used for evil things that centralized powers
do" is so inane. It's a corollary of economic progress.

~~~
vlehto
Well yeah.

Except the thing is that geopolitics is the dictating form of politics.
Everything else comes after that.

Let's say US government needs lots of manpower to stay as global hegemon. Then
say that there is culture in US where people will gladly "defend the land of
the free". Now if you mimic a degree of freedom, you get that manpower
relatively easily.

Then you can innovate things that connect to the grid as much as you want. As
long as the DoD needs grunts, they will give you civil rights and freedom
simply because they have to. They probably would do that most of the time
because they want to. But given enough time, you will see clusters of bad
apples to get office.

It's kinda ironic that US has to be "free" and "powerfull" compared to the
enemies. If China opens up their internet bit more, US citizens will get net
neutrality without fighting. Also if China produces weapons that take away the
technological edge or US, then America needs more manpower to the armed
forces. That would lessen political polarization, corruption etc. Nothing
unites like common enemy. Except capable common enemy.

------
ChuckMcM
It certainly seems to validate the strategy of "grand challenges" to focus
research. One could argue that the X prize helped spawn today's commercial
space companies. So does this mean a good way for benevolent billionaires to
improve the world would be to sponsor things like this? Certainly Gate's
sponsoring the toilets prize was influential in bringing out better sanitation
ideas.

I wonder if anyone would sponsor a prize for an 'off grid' sustainable living
space. People create slums and homeless encampments out of a variety of cast
off materials, is there a way to create housing for people which would be
safer and enhance their quality of life without also creating a public burden?
Perhaps that is a pipe dream but it is something I wonder about.

~~~
rory096
>One could argue that the X prize helped spawn today's commercial space
companies.

That'd be a stretch. The Ansari X Prize led to a bunch of companies pursuing a
goal with little commercial value and few designs with orbital aspirations.
The winner led to a costly, dead-end design that has still yet to fly again
for suborbital tourism, killed four people along the way, and will never
service orbit. The rest of the companies are either dead or vaporware.

That said, I'm generally in favor of prize-based challenges to spur
development at lower cost, as long as you aren't forced to set a goal that's
entirely tangential to what you _want_ out of industry. Newt Gingrich is a
notable supporter of the idea, but I'm not aware of any other prominent
politicians who support it.

~~~
jkimmel
Sanders proposed a prize system for pharmaceuticals. It's an interesting
alternative to patents for rewarding innovation in that space particularly,
which is entirely patent dependent.

[https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/s627/text](https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/s627/text)

------
cschmidt
I would argue that the 2004 DARPA challenge was a failure with the best car,
Sandstorm, only going 7 miles before getting stuck on a rock. That led to a
do-over in 2005 that was really the first success.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge#2004_Gra...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge#2004_Grand_Challenge)

~~~
Fricken
I would argue that no one who has commented in this thread so far has actually
read the article.

~~~
jessriedel
Ha, yes it's especially obvious in this case since the HN-chosen title is
opposite the general flow of the article.

I think people would be more likely to read the bulk of articles if they
actually followed the inverted pyramid structure. Instead, nearly every one
begins with a meandering human-interest story to draw the reader in.

Whatever happened to those proposals to annotate the web?

------
vladislav
The DARPA grand challenges were an important step for autonomy, by
demonstrating basic capabilities and bringing attention and industry funding
to the field, but overhyping the expertise gained there may have held the
field back over the years. The hardest part of building a self-driving car has
proven to be robust perception (processing sensor data to create a very
accurate representation of the dynamic environment), which is an aspect that
was not heavily emphasized in the challenges: for instance, the winning entry
in 2005 had $500K worth of Lidar on it, and the cars were given a GPS map,
which allows very accurate localization with yet another expensive sensor
(differential GPS). By all accounts I'm aware of, the perception software
involved in the challenges was rudimentary, and a lot of the effort was spent
on mechanical engineering and path planning. Most importantly, robustness
cannot be demonstrated in a one-off competition. Building robust perception is
a hard AI problem, and the expertise required to tackle this aspect is
orthogonal to the robotics aspects demonstrated in the challenges (which are
also obviously very important).

~~~
matt4077
I think this graph from the article supports its thesis pretty well:
[https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iUXzVqS5lbv...](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iUXzVqS5lbvg/v9/-1x-1.png)

And that thesis is not, obviously, that the most important problems, or even
any problems, were solved by the DARPA challenges.

> Building robust perception is a hard AI problem,

Oh, I predict, now and here, that something like the following will be posted
to HN in 2025 at the latest: "Yes, it's great that my Tesla Model Z lets me
browse the internet while commuting, But lets not pretend that this is AI.
It's just basic statistics. Also, I really like cozy warmth of Tesla's new
line of coal-powered vehicles."

------
wyldfire
There was a great "Nova" episode on the Grand Challenge [1].

[1]
[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/darpa/about.html](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/darpa/about.html)

------
bmcusick
It was 13 years from the Wright Flyer to the first commercial fixed-wing
aircraft. And that was still very dangerous. Jet engines (which really
introduced the safety we are used to in airlines) took 50 years.

~~~
ptero
Jet travel brings improved speed and comfort, not really improved safety. Prop
planes, as a technology, are _very_ safe. It is a lot easier to land a prop
with a failed engine or another part -- due to is low speed one can land small
props with a high chance of no injuries on unprepared surfaces such as grass
fields. For jets, if you have a failed engine and no landing strip you are
likely toast (although there are some well publicized exceptions).

The great flight safety numbers of modern jet travel are due to the fact that
commercial traffic is heavily regulated end to end, from production to
operation, licensing and maintenance. None of this is specific to jet travel,
it is just that speed and comfort pushed props mostly out of the business.

~~~
terravion
It is very counter-intuitive, but speed increases safety in an aircraft type
both as a function of hours and as a function of miles. This is an empirical
fact that's true for both military and civilian aircraft, I was looking for
the US Air Force chart on this, but couldn't seem to find it. Not to discount
other factors, but the OP is correct that speed increases safety. Maybe
someone with more Google skills can find this chart.

~~~
jacquesm
Speed + altitude combine to give you options, options are what makes an in-
flight issue survivable.

------
abalone
Ahhh DARPA, that state controlled, taxpayer funded, centrally planned bedrock
of free market capitalism.

~~~
hueving
Even if the government entity is taxpayer funded and centrally planned, this
is a competition structured like a market. They set out a bid (the winning
amount for the goal) and people can compete however they see fit and spend
what they want.

Similarly, the Army doing RFPs to buy a bunch of toilets is still a free
market to compete in as a toilet supplier.

~~~
abalone
Didn't say it wasn't "like a market" in some ways. But DARPA is very much not
free market capitalism. It is state capitalism. Silicon Valley is the product
of massive government investment.

------
guicho271828
27 years. The first famous "proof of concept" autonomous driving is Navlab
(Thorpe, 1990). (Are there any prior projects?)

~~~
Retric
A little more than that.

Navlab 1 was built in 1986 using a Chevrolet panel van.[2] The van had 5 racks
of computer hardware, including 3 Sun workstations, video hardware and GPS
receiver, and a Warp supercomputer.[2] The vehicle suffered from software
limitations and was not fully functional until the late 80s, when it achieved
its top speed of 20 mph (32 km/h).[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navlab](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navlab)

~~~
grkvlt
The Warp supercomputer is interesting [0] as it's apparently a 'systolic
array' computer. Never heard of that architecture before...?

0\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WARP_(systolic_array)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WARP_\(systolic_array\))

------
djrogers
Proving that one (or something) can drive is a far cry from proving that one
can safely drive in a wide variety of changing conditions around other
drivers. I would however argue that many people don't actually possess the
latter ability, and I think 'robots' will get there before we as a species do.

------
tw1010
Putting what everyone is saying more abstractly; solving a constraint
satisfaction problem in a nice and closed domain should not make us surprised
that it isn't as quick to deal with when lifted to an unbounded and messy
space.

------
startupdiscuss
It was common lore in CS grad school that there were self driving cars, funded
by DARPA, driving around the CMU campus back in the 90s.

It was not as easy to look things up. I am glad this story is being told, but
I'd love to know about the history and the early days.

~~~
Animats
There was one at CMU back in the 1980s, the NavLab. Autonomous vehicle with a
crew of five. Three racks of workstations. Really, really slow.[1]

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntIczNQKfjQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntIczNQKfjQ)

~~~
jacquesm
Compared to the cars in the background it is doing just fine speed wise!

------
philfreo
StartUp's most recent podcast episode is related:

[https://gimletmedia.com/episode/grand-challenge-
season-6-epi...](https://gimletmedia.com/episode/grand-challenge-
season-6-episode-7/)

------
matt4077
This video of the 2007 Urban Challenge has some excellent footage and
questionable fashion choices:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xibwwNVLgg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xibwwNVLgg)

(I'd also like to mention my appreciation for Bloomberg for not only
publishing such articles as this, but also for actually linking to other
interesting content not published by them)

Edit: Another find down the youtube rabbit hole:
[https://youtu.be/DkdESqML41g?t=3h47m30s](https://youtu.be/DkdESqML41g?t=3h47m30s)
has 9 hours(!) of slow-motion robot tragedies.

------
659087
Always-connected self-driving vehicles in many ways seem like something that
would be a dream come true for the government and intelligence/law enforcement
agencies (not to mention the advertising companies currently developing some
of those vehicles).

------
virgil_disgr4ce
I was just telling someone about this the other day. In college at UF, I
produced dozens of video segments on engineering student projects, and the
DARPA challenge was among the biggest deals, and that was now a decade ago. It
wasn't on anybody's radars (so to speak). It's funny how even a little bit of
progress suddenly flipped the concept into the popular imagination.

------
barnabee
In 2007 (when the first iPhone was released), it had been (at least) 15 years
since "phones proved they could run apps" [1]. Knowing a limited version of
something is possible doesn't tell you a lot about the road to
commercialisation and widespread acceptance.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone#cite_ref-
schneidawi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone#cite_ref-
schneidawind_8-0)

~~~
sandworm101
And proving that something is possible is far from proving that it is actually
safe. 15 years after kittyhawk aircraft were widespread and common, but still
deathtraps by our modern standards.

