Talk:Stanley (vehicle)
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[edit] Too much copied from other sources?
Anyone else notice that the wording for some of the equipment-related parts comes from http://cs.stanford.edu/group/roadrunner/technology.html? Raazer 13:32, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Hype
This site links to a rather biased WIRED article, and in the Stanford AI lab home page I just found this announcement of another one: "Dec 29, 2005: Stanford built three of the top ten robots ever! According to a recent evaluation by Wired Magazine, three of Stanford's robots were among the top ten robots ever: Stanley (Number 1), Shakey (Number 5), and the Stanford Cart (Number 10). Wired Magazine polled numerous experts to determine the 50 Best Robots Ever. Check it out!"
The problem is, of course, that WIRED is based in San Francisco and has strong ties to Stanford. Local patriotism may be fun, but few if any unbiased roboticists would agree with that list.
So what kind of "experts" did they poll? Maybe cartoonists, since Number 2 is a fictional Japanese comic strip robot. The other cars that finished shortly after Stanley are not even mentioned...
Probably the list is not meant to be taken seriously. Any serious list would be dominated by real Japanese robots (and would not even mention fictional ones), since Japan dominates robotics research and has 40 percent of the world's robots, including many of the most expensive and sophisticated and famous ones. I don't think any mere car would rank among the top 5. But don't expect WIRED to publish such a list!
Nevertheless, Wikipedia articles such as this one might want to link to a bit more objective sources.
De-Hyping Stan 17:11, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Chicken and Eagle
How much of a challenge was the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge? The course was precisely layed out by numerous waypoints. No sophisticated planning procedure was necessary. Four separate teams managed to finish the course in time. This seems to suggest that the task was not that hard. In fact, several days before the race the Stanley team leader announced that this time with very high probability there would be a winner, thus confirming the general feelings of other experts. Afterwards, however, he fueled the hype by claiming, rather inconsistently: "The impossible has been achieved!" According to the questionable Wired magazine article he then compared himself to Charles Lindbergh, the first guy to fly across the Atlantic non-stop. No joke! When I read this I couldn't help thinking of the chicken claiming "I'm an eagle." I am still waiting for the confetti parade :-) De-Hyping Stan 19:45, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
Just so that we're clear on his "comparison" of himself to Charles Lindbergh, here's the actual quote from the WIRED article: "Some people refer to us as the Wright brothers," he says, holding up his champagne. "But I prefer to think of us as Charles Lindbergh, because he was better-looking." TNeloms 06:05, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Hard But Not Prohibitively Difficult
For events like these, we will never be able to tell how hard it really was. How hard was it to beat the human chess champion with a computer? And how hard wss it in hindsight??? People who participated (like myself) know that this was a difficult race, but not prohibitively difficult. That's why hundreds of people decided to work on this challenge. The fact that five teams finished is a major accomplishment for the field of robotics, especially given the 2004 results.
I suggest that rather than discussing individual articles about the race, we should really focus on how to turn these accomplishments into technology that can benefit us all, such as safer cars. It'll be a long way to go.
And for those who think the race was a piece of cake, feel encouraged to participate in the next Grand Challenge. This will be your opportunity to show to the world how easy this all is.
[edit] How Hard?
Above someone wrote: "The fact that five teams finished is a major accomplishment for the field of robotics, especially given the 2004 results." IMHO this statement is not extremely convincing. What does it tell us about the difficulty of the course when so many teams managed to finish in time, including an insurance company without any prior experience in robotics? And how impressive are the Grand challenge results to those who know what the fast robot cars of Ernst Dickmanns achieved 10 years ago (long distance trips in traffic at up to 110 mph)? ERDI 18:58, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
