As for autonomous driving technology, the biggest thrust of the start comes from DARPA.

After the 9/11 incident, when the US military was on duty in Afghanistan and Iraq, it was often attacked by improvised bombs and artillery, causing serious casualties. Therefore, the Ministry of National Defense has formulated a vision that by 2015, at least one-third of military vehicles can be driven automatically, reducing soldier casualties. Although DARPA’s own technicians are also developing, the progress is very unsatisfactory. So in 2003, a robot car competition was held. The location is the desert northeast of Los Angeles, and the distance is 240 kilometers. Anyone can participate. The first team to reach the finish line using unmanned driving within 10 hours, won a prize of 1 million US dollars.

Although there have been many requirements similar to unmanned driving before, such as robots that look for survivors in unsafe mines, and robots that go to the reactor to clean up after the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. Because of the obstacles of the environment, the wireless signal cannot maintain the communication with the robot, so in these situations, it is necessary to realize the automatic driving. However, the speed of autonomous driving in these environments is too low, moving several meters to tens of meters per minute at the fastest. And 240 kilometers are completed in 10 hours, which is almost the same as riding a bicycle.

21 teams signed up for the challenge. They come from all walks of life, including former engineers in submarines, retired helicopter pilots, mechanical engineers from West Point Military Academy, NASA technicians, cross-country rally organizers, and university professors leading students to participate.

The strategy of the champion team is to use the rough map and the detailed map together, with the video information collected by the radar and the camera. The rough map is the signal provided by the GPS on the car, which allows the car to follow the route given by the race party in a thick line of plus or minus tens of meters; the detailed map is collected in the desert a few months before the race To the characteristic landforms. A few months before the race, they drove an SUV slowly on as many roads as possible in the desert, using something similar to a selfie stick to set up the camera and stretch out the car window to capture images of the ground, the appearance of rocks, the appearance of pits, the appearance of sparse lawns… the typical features are recorded. When the race team gave the race route, use the only two hours to calculate an optimal route with the desktop computer installed on the car, and then follow the situation.

The publicity before the challenge was very successful, and a live broadcast of helicopters was also provided, and dozens of reporters came. I thought it would take from the morning to the night to get results, but in more than an hour, 21 teams were wiped out, let alone auto-driving 240 kilometers, not even 20 kilometers. As a result, this 2003 real driverless challenge ended in failure. But DARPA refused to accept it and announced that it would continue to hold the second challenge one year later, and the prize was doubled to 2 million U.S. dollars. And a year later, the first actual victory of unmanned driving finally came.

By Demi Zhang