Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works and my Heart Radio and I love
Speaker 1: all things tech. And this is the third episode in
Speaker 1: a series about driver less cars. In the first two episodes,
Speaker 1: I covered the early concepts, which mostly involved building out
Speaker 1: an infrastructure that's outside of cars, like a smart super
Speaker 1: highway that would guide traffic to where it would need
Speaker 1: to go. And I also talked about the first two
Speaker 1: Grand Challenges that were sponsored by DARPA, that's the R
Speaker 1: and D division of the Department of Defense. Darpest goal
Speaker 1: was to create an incentive for engineers, researchers, computer scientists
Speaker 1: to to innovate in the space in that autonomous vehicle space,
Speaker 1: because the United States Congress had decided that a third
Speaker 1: of all military ground combat vehicles should be autonomous by
Speaker 1: the year and progress was just not going at the
Speaker 1: speed that was needed to make that happen. So dark
Speaker 1: As assessment was that the usual defense contractors just weren't
Speaker 1: making progress fast enough that that they needed to have
Speaker 1: some other way of getting new ideas, new blood into
Speaker 1: all of this, So the Grand Challenge was a way
Speaker 1: to invite numerous other engineers to solve these really difficult
Speaker 1: engineering problems. The two thousand four challenge saw no winner.
Speaker 1: No one was able to take home the prize money.
Speaker 1: The best performing team made it less than seven and
Speaker 1: a half miles through a one forty two mile course.
Speaker 1: But the two thousand five challenge turned out much better.
Speaker 1: Five teams completed the full course and one Stanford's racing
Speaker 1: team took the top prize that year, which was more
Speaker 1: than a million dollars. Now, there was no question that
Speaker 1: the challenges had encouraged invention and innovation, from creative computer
Speaker 1: algorithms that would guide an autonomous car through decisions on
Speaker 1: wind and how to act, to designing all new hardware
Speaker 1: that would be used to sense the environment. These challenges
Speaker 1: had pushed technological development considerably. But the driverless cars of
Speaker 1: two thousand five were meant to cross a desert course
Speaker 1: sort of an off road course. There was tricky terrain
Speaker 1: to cross, and the cars had to make some really
Speaker 1: complex maneuvers in a few cases, but there was no
Speaker 1: need to compensate for the types of stuff that your
Speaker 1: typical human driver encounters every day. Namely, there was no
Speaker 1: need to worry about traffic laws or traffic for that matter,
Speaker 1: and it was important for the cars to be able
Speaker 1: to detect obstacles in order to work their way around them,
Speaker 1: but there was less worry about more specific challenges like
Speaker 1: navigating through a city that has lots of potential moving
Speaker 1: obstacles pedestrians, bicyclists, other cars. So for the next challenge,
Speaker 1: which would take place in two thousand seven, DARPA wanted
Speaker 1: to put teams to the test and have them design
Speaker 1: a car that can navigate through a simulated urban environment.
Speaker 1: Just as the agency had increased the prize money from
Speaker 1: two thousand four to two thousand and five, the the
Speaker 1: prize kitty was a million dollars for two thousand four,
Speaker 1: it was two million for two thousand five. The urban
Speaker 1: version of the challenge up to it again to three
Speaker 1: and a half million dollars in prize money total. DARPA
Speaker 1: offered two different routes to enter the Urban Challenge. You
Speaker 1: could apply using one of two different approaches. They called
Speaker 1: it Track A and Track B. A team submitting to
Speaker 1: participate in Track A would be eligible to receive funding
Speaker 1: from DARPA of up to a million dollars, but to qualify,
Speaker 1: the team would have to submit a detailed proposal for
Speaker 1: review and then, if selected, they would have to demonstrate
Speaker 1: the progress of the experiment of the prototype at four
Speaker 1: different milestone events in order to still be eligible for
Speaker 1: that program. If the team could not meet the standards
Speaker 1: that DARPA had set, then they would be removed from
Speaker 1: Track A and all financial support would stop. Sixty five
Speaker 1: teams submitted for Track A consideration, DARPA would select eleven
Speaker 1: of them to participate. Track B teams were self supported,
Speaker 1: meaning they were responsible for securing the funding necessary for
Speaker 1: technology development, execution, that sort of stuff. Those teams could
Speaker 1: seek out funding from sponsors and from other sources. So
Speaker 1: Track B teams also had to participate in certain qualifying
Speaker 1: events in order to continue the competition. There were site visits,
Speaker 1: and then there was a big qualifier that a lot
Speaker 1: of teams had to participate, and I'll talk about that
Speaker 1: a little bit later. Now, those qualifiers were meant to
Speaker 1: demonstrate that the respective teams vehicles could have a decent
Speaker 1: chance of completing a competition's task on the actual day
Speaker 1: of the final event. So It's really all about whittling
Speaker 1: down the competitors to the ones most likely to achieve success.
Speaker 1: Track B also had several other additional rules they had
Speaker 1: to follow. This is from DARPA's actual official rule book
Speaker 1: for the two thousand seven Urban Challenge. So, for example,
Speaker 1: the team leader of a Track B team would be
Speaker 1: ineligible to participate in any other Urban Challenge team. They
Speaker 1: could only work on their own team that they were leading.
Speaker 1: If you were not team leader, you could switch teams.
Speaker 1: You could work on one team and then switch to
Speaker 1: another one. Let's say that you're working on one team
Speaker 1: and it is unable to meet the qualifications that are
Speaker 1: necessary at a certain milestone, then you would be allowed
Speaker 1: to switch to another team if another team wanted to. Also,
Speaker 1: if you were a team leader, you had to be
Speaker 1: at least twenty one years old, and you had to
Speaker 1: be a US citizen. Non citizens could participate on teams,
Speaker 1: but they could not be team leaders. This is another
Speaker 1: reminder that ultimately this competition was keyed into national defense.
Speaker 1: The spirit of the competition was very jovial from what
Speaker 1: I can understand, it was very cooperative. But when you
Speaker 1: take a step back and you look at the overall picture.
Speaker 1: You remember, Oh, this is so that DARPA can develop
Speaker 1: the technologies or can can encourage the development of the
Speaker 1: technologies that will be needed to power the future ground
Speaker 1: combat vehicles. Unlike the previous Grand Challenges, DARPA even allowed
Speaker 1: teams to secure funding from government sources the previous ones.
Speaker 1: If you listen to my last episode, you know they
Speaker 1: said you couldn't get money from federal sources, but all
Speaker 1: such funding had to be explicitly approved and authorized by
Speaker 1: whatever the respective government department was for the use of
Speaker 1: this Grand Challenge. Government sponsored teams were, however, prevented from
Speaker 1: using any technology or information that was under any kind
Speaker 1: of classified status. So you couldn't use any top secret
Speaker 1: stuff because that was against the rules. I mentioned briefly
Speaker 1: what the overall goal of the Urban Challenge was, this
Speaker 1: idea of maneuvering through a simulated urban environment. But I
Speaker 1: think it's more helpful if we actually go through all
Speaker 1: the elements that DARPA spelled out in the official rules.
Speaker 1: This is what was sent to any interested party that
Speaker 1: was applying to be part of the Urban Challenge. This
Speaker 1: illustrates exactly how challenging the whole thing ended up being
Speaker 1: and the specific objectives of the Grand Challenge were and
Speaker 1: these are all quotes from the rule book. Complete a
Speaker 1: mission defined by an ordered series of checkpoints in a
Speaker 1: complex route network. The vehicle will have five minutes to
Speaker 1: process a mission description, but for attempting the course, interpret
Speaker 1: static lane markings as in white or yellow lines provided
Speaker 1: with the Route Network Definition file that's R in DF,
Speaker 1: and behave in accordance with applicable traffic laws and conventions.
Speaker 1: Darp as intent is for the R and d F
Speaker 1: lane boundary descriptors to match the physical lane markings on
Speaker 1: the ground. DARPA cannot ensure that this will be the
Speaker 1: case in all areas, and as such, the R n
Speaker 1: DF will take precedence over the physical ground markings in
Speaker 1: conflicting areas. So, in other words, DARPA would provide to
Speaker 1: each team a digital file that would represent the area
Speaker 1: the features of the course. It wouldn't give information about
Speaker 1: where anyone was expected to travel, but it would give
Speaker 1: a layout of all the different roads in that course,
Speaker 1: and according to that file, you would program your autonomous
Speaker 1: cars behaviors to follow within those guidelines, and if the
Speaker 1: car were to come upon part of the road that
Speaker 1: was not in accordance with that same digital file, it
Speaker 1: would defer to the digital file as opposed to the
Speaker 1: actual conditions the road. So if in one case a
Speaker 1: lane is is shown as being in one orientation and
Speaker 1: it turns out it's slightly off in reality, you go
Speaker 1: with the file, not with what reality is. This reminds
Speaker 1: us that this is in fact a simulation, because that
Speaker 1: does not fly in a real world situation. You have
Speaker 1: to conform to what is really there for all drivers.
Speaker 1: Back to the rules, the vehicles to exhibit context dependent
Speaker 1: speed control to ensure safe operation, including adherents to speed limits.
Speaker 1: It's to exhibit safe following behavior when approaching other vehicles
Speaker 1: from behind in a traffic lane, which includes maintaining a
Speaker 1: say following distance. Is to exhibit safe check and go
Speaker 1: behavior when pulling around a stopped vehicle, pulling out of
Speaker 1: a parking spot, moving through intersections, and in situations where
Speaker 1: collision is possible, and is to stay on the road
Speaker 1: and in a legal and appropriate travel lane while en route,
Speaker 1: including around sharp turns, through intersections, and while passing. The
Speaker 1: route definition or Route network definition file will specify the
Speaker 1: GPS coordinates of the stop signs. The R and d
Speaker 1: F specifies the location of stop lines on the ground.
Speaker 1: On paved areas. Such stop lines will be represented by
Speaker 1: a painted stop line on the pavement. Physical stop signs, however,
Speaker 1: may or may not be present at the stop line locations.
Speaker 1: Navigate safely in areas where GPS signals are partially or
Speaker 1: entirely blocked. Uh there to follow paved and unpaved roads
Speaker 1: and stay in the lane with very sparse or low
Speaker 1: accuracy GPS way points very important because there for a
Speaker 1: long time GPS receivers were of questionable reliability, especially if
Speaker 1: you're going, like through a city with a lot of skyscrapers,
Speaker 1: for example, you might have signals blocked and then you
Speaker 1: would lose connectivity with GPS receivers. This still happens to
Speaker 1: this day, but not as frequently, at least not in
Speaker 1: my experience. It turns out that um whether there are
Speaker 1: receivers that are using other systems to supplement that data,
Speaker 1: or the actual receivers are just more sensitive, it seems
Speaker 1: to work more reliably these days. The vehicle was to
Speaker 1: change lanes safely when legal and appropriate, such as when
Speaker 1: passing a vehicle or entering an opposing traffic lane to
Speaker 1: pass a stopped vehicle. Vehicles must not pass other vehicles
Speaker 1: queued at an intersection. Very important. You can go around
Speaker 1: the car that's stopped in the middle of the road
Speaker 1: because of some possible mechanical failure. But you can't go
Speaker 1: around the car just because it's come to a stop
Speaker 1: at an intersection, because it might be waiting for its
Speaker 1: turn to go. Merge safely with traffic moving in one
Speaker 1: or more lanes. After stopping at an intersection, the vehicle
Speaker 1: would be able to pull across one lane of moving
Speaker 1: traffic to merge with moving traffic in the opposing lane.
Speaker 1: It was supposed to stop safely within one meter of
Speaker 1: the stop line at a stop signed intersection and proceed
Speaker 1: without excessive delay, so less than ten seconds delay according
Speaker 1: to intersection precedents rules. It was to exhibit proper que
Speaker 1: behavior at an intersection, including stopping at a safe distance
Speaker 1: from other vehicles and stop and go procession to the
Speaker 1: stop line without excessive delay. It was to navigate a
Speaker 1: destination toward a destination in a large open area where
Speaker 1: minimal or no GPS points are provided, as in loading
Speaker 1: dock areas or parking lots. These areas may contain fixed
Speaker 1: obstacles such as parked vehicles and moving obstacles, including other vehicles.
Speaker 1: It was to safely pull into and back out of
Speaker 1: a specified parking space in a parking lot. It was
Speaker 1: to safely execute one or more three point turning maneuvers
Speaker 1: to affect a U turn. And it was to dynamically
Speaker 1: replan and execute the route to a destination if the
Speaker 1: primary route is blocked or impassable. These are all things
Speaker 1: that human drivers can do, and these are all things
Speaker 1: that human drivers do on a regular basis. But as
Speaker 1: you sit there and think about what it's needed to
Speaker 1: program a machine to be able to do these things,
Speaker 1: you start to recognize the challenges here because you have
Speaker 1: to be able to detect these scenarios and then you
Speaker 1: have to be able to react appropriately based upon the
Speaker 1: information that's available to you. So it's not just you know,
Speaker 1: if this, then that there are a lot of other considerations,
Speaker 1: and it gives you a hint at the challenge that
Speaker 1: was ahead of these teams. However, DARPA did point out
Speaker 1: a few things that were outside the scope of this
Speaker 1: challenge that teams would not need to worry about for
Speaker 1: the purposes of this competition that included the recognition of
Speaker 1: external traffic signals like traffic lights and stop signs through
Speaker 1: the use of sensors. You didn't have to worry about that.
Speaker 1: So because they were providing information about where stop signs
Speaker 1: were based on GPS coordinates, you could program that directly
Speaker 1: into your system, so that your car quote unquote knows
Speaker 1: to stop at a certain point because it quote unquote
Speaker 1: knows there's a stop sign, there doesn't have to detect it.
Speaker 1: It's been programmed with that info, so there was no
Speaker 1: need to develop any kind of optical system that would
Speaker 1: detect a stop sign or a traffic light. This works
Speaker 1: great if you're operating in a very limited area, right
Speaker 1: in this case, in this simulated urban environment, if you're
Speaker 1: operating in something where you've got to find border, and
Speaker 1: you know quote unquote everything about that's everything that's inside
Speaker 1: that border, you can program this kind of stuff into
Speaker 1: your vehicle directly. But this approach it's more and more
Speaker 1: impractical the larger your area of services. So while you
Speaker 1: might be able to program this in for an area
Speaker 1: that might consist of a few simulated blocks of a city,
Speaker 1: it doesn't really work so well for a full city.
Speaker 1: You would have to go in and program the GPS
Speaker 1: coordinates for every single stop sign and every single traffic signal.
Speaker 1: Not only that, but for traffic signals, you would also
Speaker 1: have to figure out a way for your vehicle to
Speaker 1: understand when the signal had changed. But for the purposes
Speaker 1: of the competition, they said this isn't necessary. They also
Speaker 1: said it's not necessary to be able to recognize pedestrians
Speaker 1: or build in pedestrian avoidance in your vehicle because there
Speaker 1: were not going to be any pedestrians on the simulated course. Clearly,
Speaker 1: that would also be something that would be necessary if
Speaker 1: we were to use driver lest cars in everyday life,
Speaker 1: but for the purposes of this challenge not not pertinent.
Speaker 1: Also outside the scope or behaviors necessary for high a driving,
Speaker 1: such as high speed passing or high speed merge at
Speaker 1: an on ramp. Speed limits for the urban challenge will
Speaker 1: be thirty miles per hour or less, because again, it
Speaker 1: was supposed to be going through surface streets in a
Speaker 1: city environment, not on a highway. Driving in difficult off
Speaker 1: road terrain is outside the scope of the program. Off
Speaker 1: Road navigation in an unpaved area, travel along roads with potholes,
Speaker 1: and travel along a dirt road are within scope, so
Speaker 1: no off road travel would be necessary, But they didn't
Speaker 1: guarantee that all the roads would be in perfect condition
Speaker 1: and that a vehicle might have some difficult terrain that
Speaker 1: that a regular driver might encounter if uh, the area
Speaker 1: they are in has different types of roads like gravel
Speaker 1: roads and that kind of thing. No, uh, obviously we
Speaker 1: would need more than what DARPA was rolling out to have,
Speaker 1: like a driverless car that that a person could safely
Speaker 1: eide in. But you have to crawl before you can walk.
Speaker 1: We'll talk a little bit more about the Urban Challenge,
Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: All Right, so I've talked about the objective of the
Speaker 1: Urban Challenge, but but what about the actual procedure. Well,
Speaker 1: every team would receive a detailed layout of the test
Speaker 1: area that would be that digital file I mentioned that
Speaker 1: would have all the accessible roads, all the parts of
Speaker 1: the course that the vehicles could drive through without penalty.
Speaker 1: That would help teams define exactly where their vehicles could
Speaker 1: and could not go. So this is sort of like
Speaker 1: getting a really really good map of a specific part
Speaker 1: of a city that you're working with there's no information
Speaker 1: about the route on that map. It's just a map
Speaker 1: of the area. Immediately before the test, vehicles would be
Speaker 1: given a series of check points that they were told
Speaker 1: they had to visit. The pathway between those checkpoints was undefined, however,
Speaker 1: so the vehicles could actually plot their own course from
Speaker 1: start to finish, which is kind of like getting in
Speaker 1: a friends car and you say, hey, let's go to
Speaker 1: that that pizza place that we like to go to,
Speaker 1: and you find out that they take a different route
Speaker 1: than you would to get to that specific destination. So
Speaker 1: each vehicle would be able to plot its own route
Speaker 1: that that made the most quote unquote sense to the
Speaker 1: respective vehicle, and they'd have to do this a few times.
Speaker 1: There'd be a few different checkpoints, but the actual uh
Speaker 1: direction that the vehicle would travel would be up to
Speaker 1: the vehicle. In addition, there could be road blockages on
Speaker 1: the course and they would not be indicated by the
Speaker 1: r n d F information. They wouldn't be on that map,
Speaker 1: so you wouldn't get a map that said, oh, by
Speaker 1: the way, this little road here is actually going to
Speaker 1: be blocked so you can't go down it. And that
Speaker 1: was important. They want to have the blockages there, but
Speaker 1: they didn't want the teams to have advanced knowledge of
Speaker 1: which routes were blocked. Just like a static map, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't know if a road was temporarily closed because of
Speaker 1: a wreck or flooding or whatever it might be. So
Speaker 1: when you encounter that sort of obstacle, if you're a
Speaker 1: human driver and let's say you've just got a paper map,
Speaker 1: you don't have a GPS receiver, you're forced to reevaluate
Speaker 1: your plan. You're forced to look at the map and
Speaker 1: consult it and figure out a different way to get
Speaker 1: to where you're going, and you have to change things
Speaker 1: on the fly. Well, that would happen in the Urban
Speaker 1: Challenge as well to these autonomous cars. In addition to
Speaker 1: the Route Network Data File, DARPA would provide each team
Speaker 1: with the Mission Data File MDF. This is the one
Speaker 1: that would actually have the information about the checkpoints that
Speaker 1: the vehicle was meant to visit, as well as information
Speaker 1: about the minimum and maximum speed limits for each road segment, saying,
Speaker 1: along this section of this road, you can go up
Speaker 1: to thirty miles per hour. For example, on the a section,
Speaker 1: twenty miles hours your maximum. That kind of thing and
Speaker 1: as the rules had stated, DARPA expected all vehicles to
Speaker 1: operate within those speed parameters for each road segment. Actually,
Speaker 1: to be more specific, each car was to behave according
Speaker 1: to the driving laws of California. Vehicles could be teleoperated,
Speaker 1: that is, they could be controlled remotely, but only for
Speaker 1: the purposes of staging the vehicle at the start of
Speaker 1: the competition, so a team could take over manual control
Speaker 1: of the vehicle in order to move it to its
Speaker 1: starting point, but then they would have to disengage from control,
Speaker 1: and at that point, each vehicle had to be under
Speaker 1: complete autonomous control with no input from the teams until
Speaker 1: the completion of the course or if the vehicle experienced
Speaker 1: some sort of failure that would remove it from consideration.
Speaker 1: All vehicles had to be built on top of a
Speaker 1: chassis that had a documented safety record, so you couldn't
Speaker 1: just build an entirely new vehicle on a custom chassis
Speaker 1: and be eligible for the competition. Most teams would retrofit
Speaker 1: existing vehicles for their entries. In addition, all vehicles had
Speaker 1: specific parameters they had to fall inside, including weight requirements.
Speaker 1: Um they had to be at least two thousand pounds
Speaker 1: that's about nine seven rams. They could be no heavier
Speaker 1: than a whopping thirty thousand pounds or thirteen thousand, six
Speaker 1: hundred krams. Now, for reference, the heaviest consumer car on
Speaker 1: the market that I could find is the Mercedes may
Speaker 1: BACHS six hundred Pullman Guard at eleven thousand, two hundred
Speaker 1: forty four pounds or five thousand one ms. Still very
Speaker 1: shy of that thirty thousand mark. If you want to
Speaker 1: go with pickup trucks, that's the heaviest class of commercial,
Speaker 1: well consumer vehicle. I should say not commercial. I mean
Speaker 1: you've got massive dump trucks and stuff. They're super heavy.
Speaker 1: But if you wanted to go out and by the
Speaker 1: heaviest pickup truck out there, you would look for the
Speaker 1: International x T, which weighs in at fourteen thousand, fifty
Speaker 1: one pounds or six thousand six d. You're still less
Speaker 1: than half of what the upper weight limit is at
Speaker 1: that point. All other heavy consumer vehicles like SUVs and
Speaker 1: vans are actually in between those two extremes. So it
Speaker 1: would have to be a really hefty vehicle to max
Speaker 1: out the weight limit of DARPA. But this reminds us
Speaker 1: again the ultimate golfer DARPA is to develop technology to
Speaker 1: devote toward automating military combat ground vehicles, which tend to
Speaker 1: be a bit on the hefty side. In addition, the
Speaker 1: vehicles had to have a minimum wheelbase of seventy two inches,
Speaker 1: which is about one point eight meters from the front
Speaker 1: axle to the back axle, and it could have a
Speaker 1: maximum width of nine feet or two point seven four
Speaker 1: meters and a maximum height of twelve feet or about
Speaker 1: three point seven meters. Vehicles had to be able to
Speaker 1: move autonomously, both forward and in reverse. They had to
Speaker 1: be able to make that you turn. They had to
Speaker 1: be able to turn on a typical urban street which
Speaker 1: would be about thirty feet wide or nine meters, and
Speaker 1: not climb up on the curb on either side. They
Speaker 1: had to be vehicles that traveled on tires. There it
Speaker 1: could be no treads, no tracks, nothing like that. Had
Speaker 1: to be on tires. Uh. They were not to damage
Speaker 1: the surface of a street with their passage, so it
Speaker 1: couldn't be a means of getting around that could actually
Speaker 1: tear up the road. And all the vehicles, sensors, and
Speaker 1: technologies had to be self contained. The teams would not
Speaker 1: be allowed to set up any sort of additional sensors
Speaker 1: in the area to aid in the vehicle navigation or operation.
Speaker 1: All data processing would similarly have to take place inside
Speaker 1: the vehicle, So it was against the rules for the
Speaker 1: sensors to send data to some external computer for processing
Speaker 1: and then have that external computer beam back instructions. And
Speaker 1: when you consider the fact that vehicles need to make
Speaker 1: split second decisions to avoid a potential accident, you probably
Speaker 1: come to the same conclusion that this is the most
Speaker 1: logical approach. You don't want to insert delay if you
Speaker 1: can avoid it. It was also against the rules to
Speaker 1: operate a vehicle that was a hazard to its environment.
Speaker 1: DARPA stated that except for the quote normal byproducts of
Speaker 1: power generation end quote, vehicles would not be allowed to
Speaker 1: jettison any other material from them. So you couldn't do
Speaker 1: anything other than put out the normal kind of exhaust
Speaker 1: that vehicles tend to put out. Actually, DARPA specifically prohibited
Speaker 1: quote smoke screen or any other obscurant intentionally discharged end quote.
Speaker 1: I guess they were keeping in mind that a lot
Speaker 1: of people participating in the challenge had built robots for
Speaker 1: robot battles, and maybe they were taking the competition parts
Speaker 1: super serious, but I find that pretty amusing. The idea
Speaker 1: that no no smoke screens, and it was specifically pointed
Speaker 1: out in the rules. Teams were allowed to create a
Speaker 1: backup vehicle to the one day intended to race, and
Speaker 1: that way, if the primary vehicle should suffer some sort
Speaker 1: of setback on race day, the backup vehicle could take
Speaker 1: its place, but they had to be absolutely identical in
Speaker 1: operation and in systems, and DARPA would put any second
Speaker 1: vehicle through the same inspection and safety demonstration processes as
Speaker 1: they would the primary vehicle. All vehicles had to have
Speaker 1: a wireless emergency stop system built into them. An emergency
Speaker 1: stop was the only permitted outside interference DARPA would allow
Speaker 1: during the final event, and it would mean removing the
Speaker 1: vehicle from consideration if you had to activate it. But
Speaker 1: if you're at the point when you need to hit
Speaker 1: the emergency stop on a vehicle, you've pretty much concluded
Speaker 1: that you are no longer in the running. You're just
Speaker 1: trying to minimize damage at that point. So DARPA supplied
Speaker 1: every team entering into the qualifier event with a government
Speaker 1: owned e stop system, and it was up to the
Speaker 1: teams to integrate that system into their respective vehicles and designs.
Speaker 1: As for wireless signals in general, DARPA did allow vehicles
Speaker 1: to receive wireless signals, but really only for the purposes
Speaker 1: of position determination. So like GPS satellite data, they could
Speaker 1: receive that, and vehicles could omit and sense signals as
Speaker 1: part of sensing the environments, just using li dar, you know,
Speaker 1: the laser based variant of what radar is. But teams
Speaker 1: would not be allowed to communicate with the vehicles and say, hey, hey,
Speaker 1: you want to turn left up ahead. You couldn't do that.
Speaker 1: The equipment on the vehicle had to be able to
Speaker 1: do one other really important task. The systems on board
Speaker 1: each vehicle had to be able to accept a USB
Speaker 1: two point oh flash drive, because that's how DARPA would
Speaker 1: transfer the mission data file over to the car's system.
Speaker 1: Cars had to be able to go from the MDF
Speaker 1: loading process to full autonomy within five minutes. That was
Speaker 1: the five minutes start, so you get the MDF, the
Speaker 1: timer would start ticking and your car had to leave
Speaker 1: the starting area within five minutes. There are a few
Speaker 1: other things that teams had to take it to consideration,
Speaker 1: you know, I mentioned earlier that cars were not allowed
Speaker 1: to stop for more than ten seconds and to stop
Speaker 1: sign once you got through the process of making sure
Speaker 1: the right of way was given. Uh. This was to
Speaker 1: avoid the situation where someone gets at a stop and
Speaker 1: they're afraid to go forward, they just keep waving other
Speaker 1: drivers through. It's the equivalent of that. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: making sure that the car could still operate even if
Speaker 1: GPS reception was lost, that sort of stuff. So we
Speaker 1: understand what the parameters were. How did it all turn out? Well,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you, but first I'm gonna take a sip
Speaker 1: of tea and thank our sponsor. After all the applications,
Speaker 1: DARPA selected fifty three teams to move into the next
Speaker 1: phase of the competition, and out of those fifty three teams,
Speaker 1: DARPA would authorize thirty six of them to participate in
Speaker 1: the National Qualification Event, the n QE. That's kind of
Speaker 1: the precursor to the final race, and like the final race,
Speaker 1: the n QUE took place in a simulated urban environment.
Speaker 1: DARPA would actually make use of a retired Air Force
Speaker 1: base in California. Is an Air Force base that was
Speaker 1: no longer in active use had been essentially abandoned, and
Speaker 1: they ended up taking over it and turning a very
Speaker 1: small part of this very large base into a couple
Speaker 1: of city blocks or simulated city blocks. The n QUE
Speaker 1: had three major components to it. In one, autonomous cars
Speaker 1: were to essentially circle a block by making left turns
Speaker 1: at each corner. So go down the street, stop at
Speaker 1: an intersection, make a left, go down to the next intersections, stop,
Speaker 1: make a left, etcetera, etcetera, and it would try and
Speaker 1: circle the block as many times within a given amount
Speaker 1: of time. Meanwhile, human drivers professional stunt drivers would be
Speaker 1: driving along in both directions of traffic, so the car
Speaker 1: would have to integrate itself into traffic, so not just
Speaker 1: turning left, but turning left at a point that was
Speaker 1: appropriate based upon the movement of traffic at that time.
Speaker 1: Although all cars were supposed to behave as if it
Speaker 1: were a four way stop is from from what I understand.
Speaker 1: The next part of the inquee required cars to navigate
Speaker 1: through a suburban environment and demonstrate that the basic functions
Speaker 1: of an autonomous car navigation rerouting if it encounters an
Speaker 1: obstacle parking that kind of stuff. Uh. The third part
Speaker 1: required the vehicles to navigate through a four way stop
Speaker 1: several times as human drivers would move through the area
Speaker 1: at different speeds and that sort of thing, so to
Speaker 1: make sure that the car was behaving consistently and safely
Speaker 1: and in accordance with law. Now, the original concept had
Speaker 1: DARPA selecting the top twenty teams from that event to
Speaker 1: move onward into the final competition, but based on the
Speaker 1: performance of the vehicles at the inn quee and some
Speaker 1: concerns about what the safety issues might be if DARPA
Speaker 1: were to put too many autonomous vehicles into the test
Speaker 1: area at the same time, they ultimately selected only eleven
Speaker 1: teams to continue on to the final event. They felt
Speaker 1: that if they had gone with twenty, there may have
Speaker 1: been too high a concentration of autonomous cars to human
Speaker 1: controlled cars and that it would increase the likelihood of
Speaker 1: accidents happening. So the final event of the two thousand
Speaker 1: seven challenge happened on November third, two thousand seven. Teams
Speaker 1: had six hours to complete the challenge objectives while human
Speaker 1: drivers and the other challengers were also on the course,
Speaker 1: So you had people stunt drivers driving vehicles, and you
Speaker 1: had other autonomous cars on the course while your autonomous
Speaker 1: car was trying to complete subjectives and all the same
Speaker 1: at the same time, you have to obey all the
Speaker 1: California traffic laws. Now, out of those eleven finalists, six
Speaker 1: completed the challenge, and three of them in less than
Speaker 1: six hours. Now that doesn't sound like a lot, but
Speaker 1: it's actually an incredible achievement. Remember, in the two thousand
Speaker 1: four Grand Challenge there were no winners. In the two
Speaker 1: thousand five Grand Challenge, five teams were able to complete
Speaker 1: the course. In the two thousand seven Challenge, there were
Speaker 1: only eleven finalists in total, and more than half of them.
Speaker 1: Six of them completed the course, three of them within
Speaker 1: the time frame. Coming in first place was Carnegie Mellon
Speaker 1: University's Boss vehicle, which had the reputation for being a
Speaker 1: bit of an aggressive driver, but the CMU team said, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a race. A little less than twenty minutes after
Speaker 1: Boss's final task, after it crossed the finish line, the
Speaker 1: Stanford Racing Team's Junior vehicle finished. So this was a
Speaker 1: flip of the two thousand five Grand Challenge, where Stanford's
Speaker 1: team came in first and then c m US team
Speaker 1: came in second and third in third place of the
Speaker 1: two thousand seven challenge was Virginia Tech's vehicle Odin. That
Speaker 1: one finished less than ten minutes after Stanford's vehicle, so
Speaker 1: it was hot on the the tail of Stanford's car.
Speaker 1: The other three that finished were M I. T. S.
Speaker 1: Tallos vehicle which ended right around the six hour time limit,
Speaker 1: and then the little Ben Toyota Prius from the Ben
Speaker 1: Franklin Racing team that had team members from the University
Speaker 1: of Pennsylvania and Lehigh University from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And then
Speaker 1: you had in the sixth place Cornell's team which was
Speaker 1: called sky Net really Cute Cornell. The Cornell team in
Speaker 1: the Philadelphia team, their their cars finished after the six
Speaker 1: hours had passed. Of the five vehicles that got a
Speaker 1: d n F as in did not finish, one of
Speaker 1: them collided with another vehicle in a minor collision, two
Speaker 1: of them ran into stationary objects, and two of them
Speaker 1: froze after hitting either an intersection or a traffic circle,
Speaker 1: and so they were disqualified. The outcome of the Urban
Speaker 1: Challenge had a lasting legacy. While the autonomous cars that competed,
Speaker 1: we're still far too limited to function on normal roads.
Speaker 1: You would never want to unleash these on your average
Speaker 1: city street. The incredible progress that had been made in
Speaker 1: the field showed the driver less cars might actually be
Speaker 1: a possibility, and maybe not that far off. But you
Speaker 1: could also argue that this demonstration caused some people to
Speaker 1: project an unrealistic expectation of when we might see autonomous
Speaker 1: cars get a wide rollout on roads around the world.
Speaker 1: And you can kind of understand where that would come from.
Speaker 1: Right The two thousand five Grand Challenge was an off
Speaker 1: road desert course. You didn't have to worry about making
Speaker 1: your way through traffic or around stalled vehicles or anything
Speaker 1: like that. The advance you would see in two thousand
Speaker 1: seven suggested that, hey, maybe there's just a few tweaks
Speaker 1: that need to happen, and then we're gonna have driverless
Speaker 1: cars everywhere. But that ignores the fact that the challenges
Speaker 1: were really, really difficult, and the teams that met those
Speaker 1: challenges we're still struggling with some really tough problems, and
Speaker 1: they didn't have to take into consideration stuff like pedestrians.
Speaker 1: So it would take a lot more than just refining
Speaker 1: this approach to make a vehicle roadworthy. Now, one of
Speaker 1: the technologies I want to mention before I close is lidar.
Speaker 1: I've I've mentioned it once or twice, but I really
Speaker 1: want to take a moment to point it out because
Speaker 1: it was one of the standout developments the various grand challenges.
Speaker 1: So lighter works on the basic principle as radar. Right,
Speaker 1: radar sends out radio signals and then there's a receiver,
Speaker 1: and the receiver picks up the reflected radio signals, and
Speaker 1: through measuring the time difference between when they were sent
Speaker 1: out and when they were coming back, you can tell
Speaker 1: how far away an object is. There's also Doppler shift
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, but we've talked about that before,
Speaker 1: so I'm not going to go into it here. Ldar
Speaker 1: does the same sort of thing, but uses lasers instead
Speaker 1: of radio waves. So you have a receiver, a sensor,
Speaker 1: a photo cell essentially that's looking for that frequency of
Speaker 1: light and can pick up those, uh, those reflections and
Speaker 1: then be able to project on a digital map where
Speaker 1: an object is. But the problem was that the early
Speaker 1: use of lidar was very primitive, it was very limited. Uh.
Speaker 1: They really just could be sent out in in a
Speaker 1: single direction and you would know that there was an
Speaker 1: object out there, but you weren't getting very high resolution
Speaker 1: results from this. And that changed in two thousand five,
Speaker 1: and really changed in two thousand seven thanks to a
Speaker 1: guy named Dave Hall. Dave Hall had found out about
Speaker 1: lidar from a guy named Jim McBride who worked with Ford. Now,
Speaker 1: when Dave Hall looked into lidar, he found it really interesting.
Speaker 1: And Dave Hall he was the founder of a company
Speaker 1: um still is actually that was called Vladine still is
Speaker 1: called Vladine, and it was in the business of doing
Speaker 1: audio equipment. So he was getting bored with doing audio equipment.
Speaker 1: He thought, well, I'll play with this autonomous car area
Speaker 1: for a while. He had also participated in various robot
Speaker 1: war challenges and competitions. So he goes and looks into
Speaker 1: lidar and he thinks, well, this has got some potential,
Speaker 1: but it's really limited based on how people are using
Speaker 1: it right now. And while he hadn't even known what
Speaker 1: lidar was, in two thousand four and two thousand five
Speaker 1: he invented a lighter tool that would become incredibly important
Speaker 1: for all the urban challenge teams. He had what was
Speaker 1: the equivalent of sixty four lasers that were scanning outward,
Speaker 1: and they were mounted on a spinning scanner, So the
Speaker 1: scanner would spin in a circle and you would get
Speaker 1: a three hundred sixty degree scan of the area around
Speaker 1: a vehicle, and that would allow him to gather information
Speaker 1: about all the objects surrounding a vehicle, their distance from
Speaker 1: the vehicle, even whether or not those objects are moving
Speaker 1: toward or away from the vehicle. Now, that wouldn't make
Speaker 1: him win the two thou five challenge. He didn't, but
Speaker 1: his tool got a lot of attention. People noticed, Hey,
Speaker 1: this is a really cool technology. It's incredibly innovative. So
Speaker 1: in two thousand and seven, a whole bunch of the
Speaker 1: vehicles that were submitted as part of that Urban Challenge
Speaker 1: sported a lightar scanner that was created by Hall's company,
Speaker 1: Velo Dine, And in fact, Velo Dine is a leading
Speaker 1: manufacturer of light oar systems speci scifically for autonomous car use. So, uh,
Speaker 1: he became a big shot billionaire from that. It was
Speaker 1: a really amazing development. Now, in the next episode, I'm
Speaker 1: going to talk a little bit more about where driver
Speaker 1: lest cars went after the Urban Challenge figuratively speaking, And
Speaker 1: then on the episode following that, we're going to look
Speaker 1: more into the philosophy that uh that Thomas cars are great,
Speaker 1: and we're also gonna look at some opposing viewpoints, not
Speaker 1: necessarily that a Thomas cars are bad, but perhaps suggesting
Speaker 1: that we're not nearly as far along as some futurists
Speaker 1: would like us to believe. So that's gonna be the
Speaker 1: next couple of episodes, But for now we're going to
Speaker 1: wrap this up. If you guys have suggestions for a
Speaker 1: future show topics, whether it's for a single episode or
Speaker 1: maybe it's an arc like the one where currently in
Speaker 1: let me know. You can send me an email. The
Speaker 1: address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: or you can head on over to our website that's
Speaker 1: tech Stuff podcast dot com and you can let us
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