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October 08, 2005
Military combat Robots used in Nevada
Robots race across Mojave for $2M prize
The unmanned vehicles must use their computer brains and sensing devices to follow a programmed route and avoid hitting obstacles that may doom their chances.
In the most liberal sense of the word “used”...
This is a really neat idea, and is exactly the sort of thing the military ought to go about doing things. Aparently the biggest problem is not the hardware (though the off-the-shelf sensor technology being employed isn’t all that great), but rather the software-- This is much less a test of military Robots as it is of Military AI...
What I hope they’re doing, as a condition of entry, is making each contestant open source their algorithms as a precondition of entry. That way each year’s new teams get to build upon the entire body of previous work, rather than simply upon their own work from the year before...
Posted by Andrew at October 8, 2005 05:01 PM
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Comments
That IS really smart.
Posted by: Dean Esmay at October 9, 2005 01:49 PM
This is much better than hiring a defense contractor (probably for 2 billion dollars).
If Senator Proxmire were still around, the fool, he would probably give this his "golden fleece award."
Posted by: John Weidner at October 10, 2005 04:47 PM