In this daring episode, Rod and Will take us back to 1894 Paris, when a small newspaper had a brilliant idea to boost circulation. A wacky endurance race that would take no prisoners.
In this race, there were no fewer than 20 different methods of propulsion from steam, petrol, compressed air, clockwork, a system of pendulums through to a mechanical motor. From a four-tonne monster tractor right down to a tricycle. With one steering wheel in the whole race (steering wheels were not a thing back then). Basically, it was a Festival of Crazy Mechanical Stuff.
But we’re not actually talking about that race today.
We’re talking about the more high-tech (but bizarrely similar) version of that race, more than 100 years later. In 2003, the US Defence Advanced Research Agency (DARPA) announced its first ‘autonomous vehicle grand challenge’. Popular Science Magazine called this “DARPA’s Debacle in the Desert”. Excellent. You might see where this is going.
The top secret race track (the location of which was only announced three hours before the race began) ran across the Mojave Desert. The race designer, a man by the name of Sal Fish, designed a course that incorporated everything you can imagine you might find in a desert. Rocks, left turns, right turns, dips, gullies, cacti. Drop-offs, barbed wire fences, animals that could come out of nowhere, train tracks. Thankfully, DARPA, being the thoughtful department that they are, had a crew of biologists run a final sweep for the endangered desert tortoise. No animals were harmed.
Tony Tether, the Director of DARPA was really not expecting anyone to be interested. Even though there was a $1 million prize (yes, you had to finish the race, not just get the furthest). But on the morning of registration people were lined up around the block - 106 team applications in total. It’s not that hard to make an autonomous vehicle right - basically Chitty Chitty Bang Bang with a laptop?
The final, whittled-down entrants (15 in total) were the most varied bunch you can think of. From high school kids, the CEO of a loudspeaker company (excellent marketing strategy) through to a cantankerous ex-Marine who also happened to be a talented roboticist.
As for the vehicles, Sal Fish (our course designer) exclaimed “My God, these vehicles were something out of Mad Max.”
Join Rod and Will on this wild ride - did anyone win, or did it turn into a robotic graveyard? And learn how that 1894 race turned into the ultimate inspiration for the autonomous vehicles we (almost) have today.
Sources:
Standage, T. (2021). A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to what Comes Next. Bloomsbury Publishing.
The Autonomous-Car Chaos of the 2004 Darpa Grand Challenge
https://www.wired.com/story/autonomous-car-chaos-2004-darpa-grand-challenge/
World’s 1st Motor Racing Event Had A 90 Mins Lunch Break (Dec 202, 2020)
From Darpa Grand Challenge 2004DARPA’s Debacle in the Desert
Behind the scenes at the DARPA Grand Challenge, the 142-mile robot race that died at mile 7
JUN 4, 2004
https://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-06/darpa-grand-challenge-2004darpas-debacle-desert/
An Oral History of the Darpa Grand Challenge, the Grueling Robot Race That Launched the Self-Driving Car
https://www.wired.com/story/darpa-grand-challenge-2004-oral-history/
The Grand Challenge
https://www.darpa.mil/about-us/timeline/-grand-challenge-for-autonomous-vehicles
DARPA Urban Challenge
https://www.darpa.mil/about-us/timeline/darpa-urban-challenge
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Rod 00:00
We're gonna go to 1894 It's one of your favourite years isn't it? in 1994. Pierre Giffard... I don't know. He was the editor and owner of the Parisien newspaper lip petite journal,
Will 00:13
a little journal
Rod 00:14
I know. Adorable. And because I assume it was le petite, he wanted to boost circulation. He had an idea,. Car Race, obviously or rather a competition for horseless carriages. There really hadn't been one before. They'd been one kind of one, but only one guy did it. And he won.
Will 00:34
It's not a race. It's really not a race. if I'm going to race myself.
Rod 00:38
I think others tried. They tried and died. So it was gonna go for 79 miles on bumpy roads between Paris and Huion. Land in Normandy. There's a panel of judges and they all came from the le petite journal and they will determine the winner based on whether the horses Claridge
Will 00:54
determine the winner it's a race?
Rod 00:56
not only
Will 00:57
Okay, not
Rod 00:59
This is the French it's sophisticated.
Will 01:02
You must drive with flair contrast as well as going fast flair. is
Rod 01:08
Yeah, exactly. You got to pull some sick fakies and a little bit of the what is it? Style fish, snowboarding 79 Miles bumpy road, there was a panel of judges, as I say all from the journal and they will determine the winner based on whether their horseless carriage was to, quote, easy to operate for the competitors without any dangers, and not too expensive to run easy to
Will 01:29
operate for the competitors. So they they get to drive each other's for a little bit.
Rod 01:31
No it's like it's 1894. So one of the things was if you need nine people to run one person in a car, and you got to fix it every time. This is not a good business carriage. So which is fair, they want to make it work. So it wasn't a straight out race. There was also tested reliability, usability, attractive, no attractiveness, but it looked like the price was 5000 francs, which is in today's Euro, about 400 million. That's not true. No, no, no, the hopefuls had to first give us a ballpark. I have no idea. I'm not about the numbers. I'm about to feel
Will 02:01
like like is this. Is this like nothing? Is this a coffee? Or is this a house?
Rod 02:08
at least two coffee? It will if it costs 10 francs to enter the race and you win 5000 How much does it normally cost to
Will 02:16
come to this wholesome show for the facts? Some of them.
Rod 02:21
You're the wrong audience. Fun Facts. That's what they call them. First had to go through a 32 mile qualifying trial so hopefuls had to pass first. So more than 100 people chucked out the money for the entry fee, and a wide array of vehicles entered it was crazy there are no fewer than 20 different methods of propulsion.
Will 02:40
That's awesome. Isn't it? Like what are we talking about?
Rod 02:44
We got steam obviously we got your petrol compressor clockwork Wait wait
Will 02:49
wait slow don't go fast through this compressed it like someone's just got you're not gonna make seven or nine miles there I can't imagine a bike pump that could compress something enough to get 79 months
Rod 03:01
it's called a machine Wow. I said clockwork a system of pendulums hence why system of pendulum that's different to the clock with one of the clockwork Okay. What else the combination of not and what this even means and Marty and mechanical motor I assume they modified horse input gears.
Will 03:21
I went with Adam Mata you raise the dead or something that we've animated a corpse called inside inside because that's horseless so
Rod 03:29
that is its corpse full. So there was this whole list of crazy things are all kinds of sizes. So one of the biggest ones was an eight seater four times steam driven monster. Tractor it's the
Will 03:42
troup carrier. You know if he had a big family and he's got to do some shopping as well. Put the kids in the back.
Rod 03:49
Oh Christ. It cracked me up. I think it's a tractor and it was insane. Absolutely insane. And there was also it went right down to a steam powered tricycle. And there was only one of all the competitors that had a conventional steering wheel. At the time. They were uncommon. So they had levers and tillers and things I asked
Will 04:07
Did anyone have reins?
Rod 04:07
No. Ah, like ability car, but much more...
Will 04:11
You know, the horse's head reins I think was all levers until I just gotta I just gotta pause you I am loving. I am loving the diversity of this. This this smacks of festival of crazy mechanical stuff.
Rod 04:23
Yes, it does. So the timer was set to three hours. So you'd need to average about 10 miles an hour and everyone went nooo.
Will 04:30
Hang on. 79 divided by three. Doesn't make 10
Rod 04:34
I'm just reading the source man. But they said actually, it's gonna have to be four hours. It's gonna be eight miles an hour. Which is about 4000 miles an hour and the moderator I forgot I don't think about the news about their motion. Anyway, they wanted to do it too fast. No one said no too fast.
Will 04:55
You're gonna have to do a little bit under 30 miles an hour. A lot minimum. Yeah. So let me different to the number you quoted but
Rod 05:01
that's slow as hell
Will 05:04
30 miles an hour is not nothing
Rod 05:05
Anyway was supposed to be in the end eight miles an hour. So maybe the course length is wrong or this source is garbage. Imagine that I don't do research I just
Will 05:14
I know we're here for the story. And the story is not the detail... Look how engaged you are.
Rod 05:21
The final line it was 21 vehicles and they were all either petrol or steam. The others didn't work the clockwork one and that didn't work. Or it didn't work well enough.
Will 05:30
So disappointing.
Rod 05:32
So heaps happened in this race. There were twists and turns there were highs and lows, the winners and losers. People laugh, people cried, etc. And it was the inspiration probably for every vehicular endurance and innovation race. That's happened since. But I'm not going to talk about that one today. This time, I want to talk about the more high tech version that was probably inspired by this one. And it was also kind of bizarre and entertaining. So I'm going to talk about the US defence advanced research agency DARPA's first autonomous vehicle Grand Challenge, or what Popular Science Magazine called DARPA's disaster in the desert.
Will 06:24
Welcome to the wholesome show, the podcast that comes from the whole of science where it comes from. It is made by me Will Grant
Rod 06:36
and me Roderick G. Lambert's,
Will 06:39
I'm fancy. The whole of science. That's what
Rod 06:41
That's what we're about
Will 06:42
the disaster in the desert.
Rod 06:44
debacle debacle. Are you curious? Yeah.
Will 06:49
Give me more Give me more. I do. Just the idea of of DARPA drawing inspiration from this and saying, you know, what we need is more of that crazy. clockworks
Rod 07:02
And so a lot of the stuff I'm going to talk about comes from two wired articles wired and one from pop SCI, but will be notes at the in the show notes, etc. So you'll be able to follow them up. I'm not going to tell you each time where everything comes from because that would make it very awkward. So experiments on self driving cars, yes. Go back to at least the 1950s.
Will 07:22
The Jetsons? Yes, it's that count cartoon version? Yes. And if it doesn't count to have Jetson, does that count? Probably not.
Rod 07:30
Yes DARPA went that cartoon looks serious. Let's protect our troops. So early ideas, though, involve like you lay magnets or wires along a road and the cars follow those wires. You got an infrastructure laid down in the cars just go along. And some of the early ads you know, you're sitting there. You can smoke a cigarette sword cards or hug your best girl.
Will 07:49
I have seen people smoking cigarettes in non self driving cars.
Rod 07:52
While they're animals
Will 07:53
I'm not judging them for their cigarette smoking. I'm just saying no, no, I have riving while smoke I have seen it. I don't think you have to. Maybe like men hugging your best lady. Also. Yeah, not impossible while driving a car. Not impossible. But you need a bench seat, though. Yeah, old school kings gonna slide across on the bench seat.
Rod 08:10
They're gonna slide to you.
Will 08:12
What else? Are they saying you can do? Oh, there's all kinds you can smoke, smoke, play cards? You probably can't do it roll joints. I don't think DARPA was suggesting we would roll now. This is the 1950s. This was like, was it guys named Gettys? Who was a visionary of Futurama and stuff. But look, that's not autonomous. That's just a machine that follows a laid down track. That's not a machine going, Oh, I've seen something. I'll react to it. So in the early 2000s, DARPA were very keen to get autonomous cars, for convoys in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, because people getting killed by roadside bombs and stuff. Okay, okay. Okay, getting killed. I get it. Yeah. But also, we're going from highly stable environment you'd like around a factory in America, or around a town in America, you can predict where the roads are, versus a war site. why would why would you think that autonomous would be better at that?
Rod 09:04
Because if the cars are driving without people, the people don't die
Will 09:08
I accept that. It sounds sounds harder from a technical point of view.
Rod 09:15
But dreadfully hard. I mean, are no goes perfectly so they can't lay down a lot of infrastructure like magnets and wires in dirt roads in Kabul,
Will 09:23
it seems strange. If before you start the war, you know, like, wait a minute, you're like, Okay, nothing's happening here. I'm just laying down some magnets to guide are nothing, not
Rod 09:35
Thes are not agressive magnets. These are peacemaking magnets.
Will 09:38
Don't worry about it. You too can use these magnets to guide your tanks and drugs and whatever.
Rod 09:43
Why don't they try that strategy? Because they did this instead? I'm sure I'm sure.
Will 09:47
You know, when China goes for Taiwan or Russia, further into Ukraine, they could put down the magnets further.
Rod 09:56
Can you imagine? It's okay, but don't blow up this bit.
Will 09:59
It's for guidance.
Rod 10:00
So anyway, that wasn't the goal. They want to autonomous vehicles. So according to there's gonna be a bunch of quotes from different players in this which are excellent like one of the wide articles. Joseph Negron, who worked for DARPA he ended up being the manager of their grand challenge. He was in charge of this whole thing. He said, Look, the defence contractors the DARPA had been working with, they got stuck in a mind meld. Not cool Spock like that. It's like, Well, I think he means like groupthink, I again, they were thinking step by step evolutionary and they weren't progressing. We needed a revolutionary approach. He also said he wants people who do not do Department of Defence business, people who work late at night in the garages and the bedrooms, because they love what they do, and they don't care if they fail as long as they learned something.
Will 10:41
Like us real folk, making podcasts making podcasts people late on a Friday afternoon,
Rod 10:48
just before bedtime, after an early supper. So in February 2003, the head of DARPA, a guy called Tony Tether, announced it would be a grand challenge race for autonomous cars.
Will 10:59
Cool.
Rod 11:00
It would go for 142 miles because fuck it, why not? The course designer guy called Sal Fish says I got a phone call from a guy saying I'm with DARPA.
Will 11:07
Wait, his name is Sal Fish?
Rod 11:09
Yeah. Sal, like Sally. Okay. As in probably sound of authority. Okay. I'm a DARPA, the phone call says and we're putting together an event with autonomous vehicles. Would you help us make a race course? He goes off I made the course. If you'd say No,
Will 11:25
not at all. No, no scenario do you turn down that well? I mean if they asked
Rod 11:29
me if you're right course designer anyway if you weren't sure Imagine we got we got the call. You want to do this? Yes, we let's
Will 11:36
get some podcasters to make a race course for us. What could possibly go right?
Rod 11:42
Well, there would be a course. Well, that'd be great. I
Will 11:46
don't know that there would there'll be a design I don't think we'd get to 142 miles
Rod 11:50
Or one.
Will 11:52
Use existing roads for 141 Miles
Rod 11:56
Get someone to put up signs witch's hat so he made the course he said yes, it had rocks on it. left turns right turns dips gullies cactus all around the place a drop off on one side and five miles later or drop off on the other side. barbed wire fences animals that would come out of nowhere train tracks, anything and everything that a vehicle would encounter going through the desert. Cool. Makes sense to me. Yeah.
Will 12:21
No people?
Rod 12:23
No.. No Pople. Okay, no people
Will 12:30
New war zones where there's no people that just drove me that would be a nice way to do war. It's just not have people first and do your wars where there aren't people
Rod 12:38
although that might make us even more callous to this instructions to the empty nothing. Yeah. What do you care about the empty nothing?
Will 12:47
A little bit a little a little bit to be honest.
Rod 12:50
So he said he goes on he says I hired off road champions to drive the route to a man they're all men. They said this is tough even for us a so like I'm assuming rally drivers and stuff went just flattering. The guy here it was a little bit of a sucky up.
Will 13:07
Yeah. Okay.
Rod 13:07
Anyway, so that was Sal Fish. I don't know his background. I don't know if he's just sitting around going I design racing courses.
Will 13:14
Someone's got to.
Rod 13:15
So a million dollar prize was offered to whoever finished the course.
Will 13:20
More than 5000 francs. Again. I don't know if it's two coffees or whatever million dollars it's more than two coffees. I don't know how many eggs you can buy with a million dollars.
Rod 13:30
No eggs. This is 2004 dollars.
Will 13:34
I think that was that was decent money back then that
Rod 13:38
I would be okay with it now. I
Will 13:40
wouldn't say no.
Rod 13:41
Anyone listening if you've got a lazy mill lying around we will
Will 13:45
There will be people listening in the in the future. Like by definition where obviously, money will be worth nothing in a year from now.
Rod 13:56
So it was a million dollar prize who finished the course the fastest.
Will 13:59
Okay, so you couldn't you couldn't get the prize if everyone fails, but you got like 140 miles through.
Rod 14:04
Yeah, or 10 and they didn't get anywhere whatever it is. So it was open to literally anyone anyone who wanted to apply it could get a
Will 14:14
What is your definition of autonomous in that Can you can you squeeze a child in there another hide?
Rod 14:19
Not if they can be detected Undetected. Fine.
Will 14:23
Okay,
Rod 14:24
like a Cylon. In the new Battlestar Galactica. And by new I mean 20 years old,
Will 14:28
or like those ancient Victorian chess playing robots just just hit a small person inside.
Rod 14:34
And small people are by definition better at chess. I don't know about that. Anyone who have a go, and he held a kickoff event at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles to tell prospective races this is the thing so he didn't have very high expectations.
Will 14:51
You're probably all shit, but we'll do our best
Rod 14:55
not if you're gonna want to do this.
Will 14:57
He didn't have expectations people coming?
Rod 14:58
or he thought for cool people would do this because it sounds insane. It's a million bucks people have fun. That's true. So expected five or 10 would register interest. So the doors were supposed to open for registration at nine he got there at 830. And people were lined up around the block for people deep.
Will 15:14
You know, it's nice. It's a nice thing if you vaguely publicised your event, and you're getting people turning up way before you that's that's fair to say we
Rod 15:23
It's fair to say we don't get that ourselves.
Will 15:25
What? Yeah, no, something's faster.
Rod 15:29
So they end up getting preliminary applications from 106 teams. That's awesome. It's fucking huge. So till he goes on. He says they were just ordinary people who dreamed of having a car that was driverless. We made them write technical papers to explain what they were going to do.
Will 15:42
Why? Why why did they have to do homework? I get you know, fill out who owns who owns this autonomous vehicle? Why do they have to do a bit of technical paper homework first? This
Rod 15:54
They're the head of DARPA I totally do I get if
Will 15:57
the winning one is awesome. Get some details there but
Rod 16:01
I think there's also is this garbage is this a kid who saw a cartoon and drew a picture you know laser engine wheels?
Will 16:07
No. So I think it's it's it's pencil pushing bureaucrats who need some forms filled out or cities you know it, you know, it is they couldn't just have a race. They need some forms as well.
Rod 16:17
They still got too many. So they wanted to cut down they went and visited the people. And apparently one guy's wife came
Will 16:22
Why is it too many? It's in the desert?
Rod 16:24
I don't know.
Will 16:25
And 240 miles,
Rod 16:26
you know why? Logistics?
Will 16:30
They have to get their own cars
Rod 16:31
Logistics. With an X.
Will 16:34
I don't understand why it's too many.
Rod 16:36
I don't know either. I didn't ask Tony. I should have rung him. You're right. But I ran out of time. So apparently, at one point I visited a house and and one guy's wife came over to Rooney said she said, Are you the guys who've got my husband trying to mortgaged his house to build his car
Will 16:56
there's a million dollars price. So just assume the million dollars is coming? It will we'll get the million dollars. All I've got to mortgage the house it'll be fine and build a contraption. Do you mind Chitty Chitty Bang Bang with a laptop? Yeah, exactly. Yep. And so that's clockwork and laptop bolted together
Rod 17:14
Couple of pendulums.
Will 17:18
I'm thinking I'm not gonna wear a shirt while I'm doing this. Like no and also pads just just on days. And this is where we got this this the future?
Rod 17:27
Well, they're gonna be in the desert, maybe need a hat. So they got the shortlist down to 25 teams who had shown the most progress as they got close to the day. So the 25 teams then have to qualify to Speedway in California safety test reliability tag. Okay, I didn't drive in circle. So in the end, 15 qualified. March 13 2004. The teams all turned up at Barstow which is a town two hours northeast of Los Angeles.
Will 17:52
I've heard of Basto
Rod 17:52
Of course you have Because they had to start from the slash x saloon which of course you've heard of so selfish the designer said described it as a bloody shoot kicking
Will 18:04
started a saloon Yeah, that's really an autonomous car fan great.
Rod 18:08
You need a starting point.
Will 18:10
I guess all the all the laptop pushes and watches
Rod 18:13
there's people absolutely people want to see it. See the selfish call it a bloody shirt kicking cowboy type place hang eyes bloody for an American is unusual. Unless you met literally there was thinking means literally blood actual blood. So they begin the course through the Mojave Desert to a town just across in the Nevada border called Mojave. Yeah. So from Barstow to Prem in Nevada. And no one could know about the course until a few hours before you get to keep it secret. Yeah. And he also you could
Will 18:44
you could theoretically try to plan exactly turn left, turn right here, yeah right..
Rod 18:48
Until they didn't want that. So said no, no, no. Any as you put it also added a little misty. Sounds delicious, isn't it? So at 330 on race day, 15 teams got a CD. And it had around 2000 GPS waypoints that said, here's the course. Remember, this is 2004. 630 in the morning on Saturday. So three hours later, the Grand Challenge was about to kick off. Sal Fish's comment the course design was my God, these vehicles was something at a Mad Max.
Will 19:17
What do you know, though, you know, these types of people, they they will obviously focus on the autonomous elements of this, but you put in some flair in this.
Rod 19:26
I'll show you a few as we roll with them.
Will 19:28
There is no way you are not dialling down in the wild for this.
Rod 19:32
I've got to say, I thought they'd be better. I don't mean to ruin it for you. But you know, I thought that'd be more exciting. You might love them. Okay. Another guy who was on one of the teams, a guy called David Hall, who was a CEO of a loudspeaker company called Villa dine. I don't know why they just wanted to show off the loudspeakers. That's what they call them back then.
Will 19:51
With autonomous vehicles each loudspeaker
Rod 19:53
Yeah. And he comes back and way way later, he said it was like being at Woodstock for nerds. And I can imagine exactly I think that has to be a very good description. So the opening section of the course was deliberately very simple. They wanted to let people
Will 20:08
Don't start with the sharks and drop off
Rod 20:12
and a 980 degree circle, you have
Will 20:15
to get through a maze first he started studies I want to get let's start with straight ahead, because there might be some that can't do that.
Rod 20:21
It's possible, but I don't want to give anything away. I mean debacle means really good. So the vehicles begin with they were supposed to go straight from a starting gate and had a couple of narrow walls or not like small walls like a starting shoot the navigate a couple of easy turns, they go past the hundreds of people who are sitting in the bleachers near the slash x. Then they go through a couple of cattle gates onto a powerline road I see Mr. road that was set up to put the power lines in a dirt path barely distinguishable from the brown land around it. As long as a vehicle could stick to the road and handle any rocks or tumbleweeds it encountered the first few miles be easygoing. Okay, that's a direct quote about the course. They also had safety monitors and reporters dotted along the route as you'd expect because you know, you don't have the car together
Will 21:08
holding some water
Rod 21:09
There's a helicopter in the air, he had cameras it had an electronic kill switch that could kill any of the cars if it went crazy. Yes,
Will 21:19
So they got the code for all or they it's DARPA they probably don't doubt that you know, DARPA would be testing one tech whilst also testing their electronic kills was tech as well
Rod 21:30
right you're right there
Will 21:33
You know, this is all about the electronic Kill Switch tech the localised competition we can get a lot of different things that we can kill switch and this is what we need to do
Rod 21:43
before that I think you're right the race is just perfect there also other than the helicopter having it there were DARPA Chase vehicles that had cameras and kill switches to
Will 21:54
told you it is the kill switch test.
Rod 21:58
Look like these bizarre souped up golf buggies like like like small
Will 22:03
driven by men and black sort of thing. ties on and the dark shades. Yeah. killswitch.
Rod 22:09
That's right, Roy, I'd not thought of
Will 22:11
super super golf buggy kills.
Rod 22:15
Even better, this is one of my favourites because, you know, hold the Science Podcast. They had a crew of biologists run a sweep just before the beginning. Because there's an endangered desert tortoise that lives in the Mojo. Thank
Will 22:25
you, DARPA, you care so much for the endangered tortoise. I'm I'm Yeah,
Rod 22:31
I was surprised. Only one source mentions it. But I thought, Oh, good one. So final biologists sweep of the course.
Will 22:38
DARPA is of course, a government, a military agency. And if there is a checklist, they have checklists, within checklists within checklists embedded and that will be on the checklist. And their job is not to care about these things. Their job is to do this dude. I've I've heard of other people doing environmental work on military bases. And they have said, they said to me, this is by far the best funded environmental work we've ever done. Because they take it so freakin seriously that their base is is all theirs and they're well funded. And they absolutely look after it. If we're going to take a walk in that sense.
Rod 23:14
DARPA is so competitive started every five minutes that was taken every five minutes off you go it makes sense. So Tony Turner, the head of DARPA sat down and a four star Army General just showed up, sat down next to him. The race colour so you got the air like that pod race on Star Wars 1000 years ago they got to headed out
Will 23:34
Is that really your only experience of motor racing ever? Like the guy on Phantom Menace?
Rod 23:43
Two headed guy
Will 23:46
seriously, you just sucked into this story, but it was it was Woodstock for nerds
Rod 23:50
I love to go to Woodstock. I used to be an urban I'm so cool. So the general sits down extreme the race call goes Okay, it's time to go. The flag drops yellow lights start flashing a siren goes off. And Carnegie Mellon's Humvee rolls out of the gate. The announcer says ladies and gentlemen Sandstorm so it's an goes on autonomous vehicles traversing the desert with the goal of keeping our young military personnel out of harm's way then the announcer goes on says boy yah apparently Tether who was sitting next to the general when Sandstorm goes off the general apparently just said Jesus, because according to the second in charge of the whole event Sandstorm was probably going about 40 miles an hour.
Will 24:33
Okay, that's all right. So let's hear a little bit about sandstorm. Yeah, guy. There is a guy called William red Whittaker read his his Of course, inverted commas middle name, so he's a Carnegie Mellon uni robotics professor. He's the leader of the red team. I guess because he's read. For awhile he left you need to be a Marine like late 60s early 70s. And he was super Marine Corps. In fact, he was described by wired as a All of his haircuts on one day once for forever for like this haircut will last forever you don't need another one
Rod 25:06
to grow and it doesn't. Wired described him as a cantankerous ex marine and one of the most talented roboticists on the planet
Will 25:14
I've got to say I've neverheard any ex marine described other than cantankerous. That is the word that you use.
Rod 25:28
As I say Sandstorm was a big ass Humvee was chock full of the latest tech, it was hugely resourced at corporate backing. And it went first because it nailed all the preliminary stuff.
Will 25:36
Why don't you put the best one last but didn't?
Rod 25:39
I don't know boo yah?I really couldn't tell.
Will 25:42
Okay, I guess you want to start with a bit of impact. You don't you don't want the one that's going to sputter out like
Rod 25:47
you want a random general to go Jesus?
Will 25:48
Yeah, this is a failure. You've made a bad thing. Okay, you got to stop good.
Rod 25:52
You're stuck. You're stuck with Sandstorm had an elaborate mapping system, and it stored a lot of information about roads, topography, blah, blah, blah features of the world. Every square metre of the course was stored and captured in some way. Okay, their team, they would work meticulously after every trial. And so they knew the course they did it in the three hours when they got the dirty boss fucking console, you
Will 26:14
still went and charted it.
Rod 26:18
15 computers with teams of software editors and stuff
Will 26:21
who could afford 15 computers? Like, like, how could you possibly can afford 15,000 For
Rod 26:28
one computer 5000 francs.
Will 26:33
And you need eight rooms for it in that in that day in 2004 Nine ENIAC said, you know that the amount of telephone power in your computer back in 2004 could get someone to phone call someone on the moon? I did not know that. Exactly.
Rod 26:46
So they had a whole bunch of people doing a whole bunch of stuff. And the technical director who's a PhD student at the time guy called Chris Urmson, he said, we have a battering ram of a car at 22 miles an hour. Sandstorm is just a beast.
Will 26:57
So our theory of autonomous here is smash through every obstacle. It's not super autonomous, if it just drives through everything. I mean, that would be a cool way to do it, you know, there's that story about Hitler's big tank Hitler would have been a lot mad obviously, we know that started mad
Rod 27:17
megatank that you could live in family of 12
Will 27:19
you put eight houses inside this town, and he's like this will win the war. mad guy, but it's hilarious
Rod 27:26
you need more than one and they have to work.
Will 27:29
No, but I love the idea that this this, that would be the other theory of autonomous vehicle. You just go make it destroy everything in its path. And then it's autonomous
Rod 27:39
And quickly. So he was pretty happy about it, though. Talking about the red team. They fed the information into the mapping software and within 10 minutes, they've mapped the whole route they intend to follow.
Will 27:48
Yep.
Rod 27:50
And that but the simulation came back projected race time, 13 hours a day, but the limit was supposed to be 10.
Will 27:57
What the hell? I thought it started at 40 miles an hour. This is gonna slow down a Fitbit for somebody.
Rod 28:02
Well, this is a guy's guesstimate as Let's go 40 miles an hour, man. Yeah, that's 900 kilometre.
Will 28:08
Yeah. So he didn't have a radar.
Rod 28:09
No, he did not want not only a friend of his he knows where to get one. Whitaker the head read he said wait 13 hours so we could have just wandered along but he said fuck that. No. We entered this challenge that was declared a year ago and for us 10 hours was sacred. Okay, cantankerous Marine. So the red team went back to the software tweak the vehicle speed, slicing out margins of error. I was clear when he said let it run Victory or death. Sure, marine, other players in this race. So there's one great a Jeep Grand Cherokee ACCION Reising. And let's see if we got
Will 28:46
Is that the name of the car?
Rod 28:47
Sandstone
Will 28:47
Oh Sandstorm is the top one? That looks cool. Okay, so that's like a I like I liked the way that they've got a red Humvee and cut the top off and it's like a convertible like that is the Humvee you take your friends to the beach,
Rod 29:00
look at all the gear on it. They're like it's got a lot of gear.
Will 29:02
I get rid of the gear when you take your friends to the beach. But that is, that's not bad.
Rod 29:06
I'll get to that one later, but that's the that's the sandstorm. All the players. So there's an ACCION racing team. They were called ACCION racing, they had a Jeep Grand Cherokee. So they were a group of friends from San Diego, funded by an investor, who was who actually got money from importing bottled water from Micronesia, as you'd expect. So the chief the chief software slash engineer person was called and Melanie Dumas and she said, look, at first she thought that such challenge impossible, but then she started to look at how things ran. She thought, actually, I can do this as well. So apparently, the her Jeep or their Jeep had performed very well in similar terrain before this. So they're a pretty sight and they thought maybe we could even beat sandstone with a little bit of luck. Maybe we could do it. So I quote from her. We had this Jeep Grand Cherokee, we tried to keep it looking as normal as possible so that people wouldn't think autonomy was so futuristic or out of reach. We also put a couple of surfboards on the roof just to stand out I'd like to show that
Will 30:02
in case the robot wants to go surfing,
Rod 30:04
certainly they put a couple of surfboards on. So people would think, Oh, it's just a normal car. Except for all the other shit.
Will 30:09
That's where they hit the small people to drive it babies inside us inside a surfboard. That's where they were driving it.
Rod 30:16
So they had parallel sets of algorithms. She says to guide the vehicle one took GPS data, one two camera input. We took laser rangefinding data, they fed it all into what they call the voting system. I don't voting obviously means something else.
Will 30:29
Oh, no, no, it'd be it'd be choosing options here. Yeah, like there'll be a variety of systems saying we do this we do that whatever. And there's actually voting and a lot of other things. Did I tell you the story about bees that vote?
Rod 30:40
did you?
Will 30:41
Bees vote
Rod 30:42
I wanna look at the back catalogue. you should too people. so the the the Cherokee came out of the chute and made the first turn and on the second turn and made a U turn head straight back up to the starting she says I think that it's all the Gators too narrow in the sense of decided to send the car back. We made it 20 feet that was a little devastated. That was end of the race.
Will 31:03
The send the car back. If I'm programming an autonomous vehicle, and it comes to comes to thing something I can't do. I would I would have like a kill switch. Some sort of some sort of die in a catastrophic coolfire Like explode like you've been attacked by
Rod 31:20
Big aliens.
Will 31:21
Cheetahs, whatever. But don't come home. It's not cool?
Rod 31:24
How much exploding does a car attacked by cheaters do?
Will 31:28
I don't know.
Rod 31:29
I'm probing you for this.
Will 31:31
Just wait for that.
Rod 31:32
Next, well not next, another one. Cajun bot from the University of Louisiana. It was six wheeled vehicle. smack the wall on the way out of the chute knocked itself out of contention immediately. See you Cajun. Then there was one called NC by a company called ENSCO. It was described as a bathtub of a bot. And that I believe is Oopsie. I pushed a button.
Will 31:58
A bathtub. Do you remember we spoke not too long ago about bathtub bots. The bathtub Soviet robot machine was described as an upturned bathtub.
Rod 32:10
How would I remember that?
Will 32:11
Again? Again,
Rod 32:12
I'm not a listener. I'm a talker. So that was ENSCO.
Will 32:17
Do you have a photo of it not crashing?
Rod 32:19
I don't have a photo of it not crashing. But all of this is in scope because I thought ENSCO was at a company or something. Yes, it is in scope Incorporated, wholly owned subsidiary representing $140 million International Technology Enterprise. This is from their website. For more than 50 years, the ESCO Group of Companies has been providing leading edge engineering science and advanced technology solutions to governments and private industries worldwide. pretty psyched, right?
Will 32:41
I don't know who they are.
Rod 32:43
ENSCO operates in the aerospace national security Surface Transportation cybersecurity sectors
Will 32:47
yes
Rod 32:48
focuses on technologies, products and services to support the safety, security, reliability and efficiency of customer missions, field offices and subsidiaries. Representatives and partnerships are located throughout the United States and around the world.
Will 32:59
Certainly a way to make a buck.
Rod 33:01
So the flag waved the bathtub ENSCO thing stood frozen for a few seconds. It rolled forward, it stopped it started again. It drifted to the left. Got to the edge of the road where it sloped upwards and tilted one side moved back to flat ground. Then it went left again this summer went a bit too far flipped over landed on side 1000 feet into the 142 mile course.
Will 33:23
I love I love and flipped over because there's a lot of cars that don't flip all the time I get that there's some cars the do. It seems like you know just go a little bit normal and you'll be right
Rod 33:36
yeah, no, not with this company's record. So it's my run was one minute and six seconds.
Will 33:41
Goddamn
Rod 33:42
well ENSCO who are obviously going to become big supporters of the wholesome show. Then there was one called Doom buggy
Will 33:49
Doom or Dune?
Rod 33:51
as in the game, etc. Not Dune,
Will 33:53
or as in as in fate.
Rod 33:55
Yeah. Yeah. This is why this is a bunch of high school students from Palo Verde these high school. They call themselves road warriors.
Will 34:04
Yeah, they fucking do. It's nice.
Rod 34:05
And apparently almost from the beginning, this team was riven by factions between two different sets of parents
Will 34:12
in high school?
Rod 34:12
Yeah,
Will 34:13
It's the parents. It's the parents. Sometimes I question your commitment to sparkle motion.
Rod 34:22
To the dune buggy. I question you're committed to the road warriors. So one set of parents was a University of Southern California electrical, electrical engineering professor and her husband, who was also an engineer for Northrop Grumman.
Will 34:35
So so they're really using their high school students to pretend. look, as parent it's very tempting to do your kids homework. You can just go well if I just do it for you? It'd be a lot easier
Rod 34:50
or also, but they they mentored a group of very clever students, including their 16 year old son, who built his own Linux Linux based operating system to drive the machine
Will 35:01
built his own with his parents,
Rod 35:03
He's a genius
Will 35:03
with his parents.
Rod 35:05
He's a genius
Will 35:06
and also was he getting rent for free?
Rod 35:09
16 Yes.
Will 35:09
So again, again actually was that in the story
Rod 35:14
ahh it's in the small print, you know, it's in the small print and
Will 35:17
while provided free rent by his parents and probably free food so he didn't have to work or anything. He could just sit around he's getting a lot of good press a lot of good press when he's got a lot of freebies from the man
Rod 35:28
a lot of good press on this show. So um, there was the opposing
Will 35:32
you're all good. It's not your fault Joe.
Rod 35:34
We love you Joe. And their car was just like a lame SUV whatever.
Will 35:40
Well it's high school they can't afford it
Rod 35:41
well I don't think they bought it themselves. They had parents you may have bought that up. Ahh the opposing group of engineering parents also engineers of course, they resented the first groups parents proprietary attitude towards the project. Is this familiar?
Will 35:54
No, actually. My kids school, They're all the parents are very, very nice
Rod 35:59
not winkers.
Will 36:00
No, they're not.
Rod 36:01
So they wanted to use they want to use Windows. Not like Linux,
Will 36:06
Windows is great. It's got Excel and Word and they are great for autonomous vehicles
Rod 36:13
Internet Explorer
Will 36:14
autonomous vehicles will need to do spreadsheets and PowerPoint, document, reformat your margins and things like that.
Rod 36:24
Exactly. Their argument was really bottom line. Our kids are dumber and can't handle the complex stuff. So this will work. I'm paraphrasing. So they ended up having a fight and by the time they got to the trials in that California Speedway, the Linux version was out and Windows won. so they did alright you know they ran it
Will 36:41
right I take back everything I said obviously you can drive an autonomous vehicle via Excel.
Rod 36:46
Well they did so they passed the trials and then at the end of the trials someone fucked up somewhere and erased the whole operating system oh, what?
Will 36:57
Someone fucked that that sounds a little bit like someone did something deliberate I don't I don't know how easy it is to erase a whole operating system
Rod 37:04
I think it's easy
Will 37:05
When was the last time you've erased a whole operating system?
Rod 37:08
Tuesday
Will 37:08
I don't count you as the most competent computer person in the universe sorry to slouch
Rod 37:12
but I used to be
Will 37:12
but when did it when did you delete a whole operating system? I don't know anyone. I don't know how anyone is incompetent enough to delete the operating system
Rod 37:21
2004 computer. They're pretty much like two bricks with a
Will 37:25
you accidentally between them A and and command and delete operating
Rod 37:30
yeah and then smash the battery that's how it works. The chip the moss is gone. That happened so a group of students spent the whole night before the race scrambling to fix shit up particularly steering controllers that
Will 37:41
that is a student assignment aren't really you could have said a group of students spent the night before it was due to scrambling to do everything they was set to do Sorry to slash the students you're obviously great. And you all do stuff a long time before the deadline
Rod 37:54
no you don't and we didn't do them. Apparently at the at the speedway where they were doing all this you know testing and stuff these late night all night programming sessions are really common and one 15 year old briefly went up in hospital because of dehydration. All they did was programming programmes. So at the last minute they settled on a solution they hoped it would work they had no time to test at the dune buggy started the race never even turned once it rolled out in a straight line and 50 yards he hit a wall that was the end of the dune buggy after all that it's just so like. there was also one called SEMA from the University of Florida it straight off course half a mile in and got tangled in a wire fence. That was the end of that one. Fucking wheel. This was one of the ones all like Terramax that picture Terramax is that monster there?
Will 38:41
Yeah, that's a fire truck, isn't it?
Rod 38:42
And then some. it's a specialised machine that has its three actual military truck. It had LIDAR sensors to spot obstacles it had cameras all over it etc etc.
Will 38:56
And was this a million dollar prize?
Rod 39:00
5000
Will 39:00
This car looks like it cost more than 5000 francs to get across
Rod 39:04
no no one can tell that
Will 39:08
I mean, I get get prestige as well.
Rod 39:09
They probably got it secondhand though. 900 It went 1.2 miles and then it got stuck between a pair of small bushes that it senses thought would remove all obstacles. And so they they got tired of watching go backwards and forwards it like it was trying to be in a shitty parallel park tired of watching so Tony Turner the head of DARPA say I kill it
Will 39:35
kill switch Kill Switch kill switches
Rod 39:37
which worked so apparent
Will 39:40
well I don't doubt that the kill switch test went perfectly
Rod 39:43
It went very well. So at the end, I mean the guy the head sort of guy of that team Team terramax. We put all the software in at the last minute it couldn't discriminate between different types of obstacles. Our laser scanners, picked out some brush and decided it was a moveable obstacle. So what you're wondering, you're wondering now what happened to sandstone?
Will 40:04
I am
Rod 40:05
and after this brief break, I will tell you what happened to sandstone
Brianna Ansaldo 40:11
if you're loving the wholesome show, why don't you put those wholesome feelings to good use and leave a five star review on Apple podcasts? Hey, I'm Brianna the head honcho here at Bamby Media and the new producer for these two PHD dirtbags, as you probably know already Rod and Will really, really, really suck at talking themselves up or promoting this podcast. They are useless. That's where I come in. We have big plans for this podcast and leaving a review really helps the podcasting Gods aka Apple and Spotify recognise that The Wholesome Show is worth spotlighting. So if you're loving the show, take a moment head to Apple podcasts and leave a written review. If you're listening on Spotify, you can't actually leave a written review at this point, but you can still leave them a five star rating. If you'd like a super cool wholesome show truckers hat make sure to screenshot the review and email or tweet the guys and they'll get in contact to fling you a hat
Rod 41:14
welcome back.
Will 41:15
I'm back
Rod 41:16
Sandstorm! so the robot did what it should have done to begin with. It's kids first few turns on the road no problem. Off it goes. Nine minutes in it went to a pair of fence posts that are about 12 feet apart. It's laser sensor picked up the obstacles and it should have been able to slide through but there's some kind of confusion. It hunged a left smacked onto one of the posts smashed it
Will 41:36
No
Rod 41:38
that's fine. Ah I can kind of turn it hit the other post.
Will 41:42
No
Rod 41:42
So it took out both posts like you post where do you remember the Juggernaut kind of thing
Will 41:46
kind of ruining the track for the people coming after though
Rod 41:49
90 seconds later it stopped but they reckon that might have been an accidental kill or to hit by the emergency crews
Will 41:55
DARPA.
Rod 41:59
So then I went okay got rolling again.
Will 42:01
They got an unkill switch.
Rod 42:02
Yeah, cuz it was a it was an oopsie.
Will 42:03
You know that DARPA would do that. is that they'll get to an unkill, unkill, unkill and unkill. We didn't mean to kill that person.
Rod 42:09
Exactly. What is it, reanimate switch. It then went on it hit about 35 metres later it hit another post. But it hadn't got up enough speed yet to get past it through it or over it. But it was a you know, it's a fucking military vehicle. Semper Fi Marine Corps. So it just kept pushing and pushing and after about two minutes, the Post gave way and he kept on going for another 13 minutes. Then he hit a boulder on the left side of the car. The recovery software sent the robot back too far to the right. So it overcorrected. Then it corrected, so it was not dead yet, still going. Then it took a hairpin a little bit wide and it's left wheels went off the road, but it kept going. Sandstone fucking legend marine corp. So it straddled the embankment that it had clipped, lifted itself just enough that the time is just a good traction.
Will 42:57
I'm just I'm just visualising what it's like to be a spectator not not a not a participant of this because the participants their hearts are in their mouths. They're like I really want this to happen. But the spectator is like I'm here for the fails
Rod 43:09
It's tops. so it's sort of like you watch ice hockey for the fight. Is there a goal? who could tell it goes too fast
Will 43:13
and again, you watch you watch robot racing for the fails
Rod 43:16
For the disasters. 100%. It's on this embankment. It's straddling it. The computers didn't know it was basically beached so it said the computers basically said hit the gas
Will 43:26
Sure,
Rod 43:27
three and a half minutes going as fast as it could
Will 43:33
computers are so fucking dumb, right. You know, you know, obviously, if any of you autonomous vehicles eventually become
Rod 43:45
a listening robot laughed with your ancestor
Will 43:46
Yes, or in the future, and you have become Roko's basilisk. And you're gonna you're gonna go back and find the podcasters that laughed at your your ancestor, sorry, laughed with Indeed, indeed
Rod 43:59
we are lording, honouring the memory. It spun its wheels, and it spun them so much that eventually the rubber melted off the tires on the front. And it was smoking up so hard know that finally the DARPA crew went and killed it.
Will 44:14
You assholes. Yeah, wait until it explodes. The fuckers like that would have been way cooler. All coyotes got it.
Rod 44:19
I don't think it was far off because apparently wheels are going so fast that they clamped the brakes on and half the shafts that connected the axle to the each wheel broke. They snapped off. So Sandstrom got 7.4 miles.
Will 44:31
Hey, that's all right.
Rod 44:32
7.4
Will 44:33
I think they could have been a little bit less ambitious with the 140 mile target. I don't know. but I like the idea of okay, we're gonna need to separate between the ones that can clearly easily very quickly do 140 miles and the ones that you know, I'll do it a bit slower. And the ones that make it 130 And we've got eight miles here?
Rod 44:37
Why? it turns out Oh 7.4 So why and one of the suspicions why Sandstorm shoot itself. It's sensing systems they reckon might not have recovered from a rollover crash during an ambitious test run. A quarter of a million dollars worth of electronics was crushed in an instant. So they did some replacements that didn't quite work anyway, fucked up and died. So back at the slash x tavern, the Sandstorm team for quite a while didn't know this thing shit itself.
Will 44:56
So they're not watching it?
Rod 45:07
I mean, they couldn't watch it live. It wasn't being live streamed there's a snippets here and there,
Will 45:18
you know, I just totally different topic, but just amazing how it's not that far ago. But now we could so easily have drones in the sky just watching all of this. With no difficulty at all.
Rod 45:41
19 years ago. It's like we've got to wait to hear the radio literally wait to get a radio update
Will 45:45
are the cricket results coming in on the times.
Rod 45:47
He's going for the thing. What a shot. You don't see how they did it.
Will 45:51
Not that long ago,
Rod 45:52
commentators would have a pencil and they go on the desk to make it sound like a cricket shot after they'd read it.
Will 45:57
For an autonomous car.
Rod 45:58
Yes. playing cricket. So the team didn't know they're sitting there waiting, cuz obviously they're not with the car. They're letting the car do its thing. And eventually the detail started to filter in over the radio.
Will 46:12
Yeah, it really is different age.
Rod 46:14
It really is. And they're like fuck. So all the work. They love the way they support the freezing nights of their abandoned steel mill test site in Pittsburgh, brutally hot days in the Nevada desert just because it's cool. Yeah, like get to the Grand Challenge.
Will 46:27
You couldn't have a robot startup just in an anonymous office building
Rod 46:31
in a local campus suburb. No, you can't not you can't you gotta have an abandoned steel works. Not cool. Not saying it's cool, but maybe they exist.
Will 46:40
I don't care. Until you've got a steel works.
Rod 46:43
Now that's true. But after all that made 5% of the way. So it was one of the favourites, the powerhouse to be reckoned with. They'd come up short. Some of the people in the team were crying. And just finally just got neck and went fuck, thank God, we can go home. So this is 9am. It started at 6:30am. This is about 9am It's not going well.
Will 47:00
It's a bit again, ambitious on the start at 630. Because we're gonna you know, you're gonna be watching this all day.
Rod 47:06
Yeah, well, that's what they thought there was one vehicle left. What? Ghost Rider
Will 47:11
Ghost Rider. No what, ooh,
Rod 47:14
Ghost Rider.
Will 47:17
every, every single name that you've quoted, I gotta say, probably a guy made.
Rod 47:23
Or not probably.
Will 47:24
I'm not sure you know that there are a lot of women in robotics, but it just sounds like the names.
Rod 47:29
Ghost Rider
Will 47:32
And correct me if I'm wrong listener, please. If you are a woman in robotics, do you have cool names? Or what difference? Are we going for here? Don't be rude. No. Like, I don't know.
Rod 47:43
How do you know this was known by a guy?
Will 47:45
It just smells it?
Rod 47:46
Like how do you know?
Will 47:47
Cuz I would name it that.
Rod 47:49
So Anthony Lewandowski. 23 year old UC Berkeley master's student. He had no backing from the uni. No one would sponsor him mainstream robotics community didn't like his own give a fuck what you guys think? Of course his attitude we don't like
Will 48:02
he's a rebel. He's a loose cannon. He's been fired from every cannon that he could possibly fire from
Rod 48:07
and they got it wrong because he's too good to be spat out of a cannon.
Will 48:11
He's a regular maverick right?
Rod 48:13
He really is a regular Maverick. So he apparently pulled together a scrappy team and created a rice scrappy team. Love that. Obviously not my words. He created a robot no one else had been crazy or stupid enough to attempt
Will 48:25
who wrote that sentence? I mean, it's the best sentence but it's also ridiculous. No, no one else is crazy enough.
Rod 48:31
No one I think it was hanging on I can tell you which which sources I come on. No was one of the Wired article.
Will 48:38
No one else is crazy enough to do this long amount of coding.
Rod 48:43
Ghost Rider was an autonomous motorcycle.
Will 48:46
Hey, Oh, that's great. Yeah, see the difference here is two wheels.
Rod 48:51
Alright, so the rationale he had behind this was it could smash Sandstorm because it was lighter and more nimble.
Will 48:56
Going back to the purpose of the test to carry logistics through the desert in Iraq. It's gonna take a lot of motorbikes to move all of your like you got these robot motorbikes or panniers just carrying all of the all of the equipment needed for
Rod 49:10
the bread and cameras.
Will 49:14
We can get one bottle of milk, one camera and one bread
Rod 49:18
I need a new hat. My hat's got a hole in it. We're gonna need another motorcycle. We need another Ghost Rider. So people were very excited. So we got to remember that Ghost Rider had performed again from what miserably in the qualifying round. But Tetherin the Grunts are the two DARPA big guys saw PR value they thought it encapsulated you know the open nature.
Will 49:40
Exactly. Not quite a marine yet but scrappy.
Rod 49:43
But yeah, he looked like he could live through something. So it fucked up all the trials and stuff. But they said screw it bring him in. Because I knew upfront he couldn't win because he couldn't carry enough fuel to cover the distance. In fact, 142 Miles apparently couldn't handle it.
Will 49:55
Motorbikes can't go 142 miles?
Rod 49:56
I think Ghost Rider could.
Will 50:00
is that a baby motorbike? Motorbike? Are they going to Peewee 50
Rod 50:07
Gerbil on the top and off it goes. But look, to be fair, the bike had crashed somewhere between six and 800 times over the previous year.
Will 50:14
You know what you're doing? Yeah, I know what you're doing. You're setting hope in my heart and it's gonna fail. It's gonna fail as well.
Rod 50:20
Why would I do that to you?
Will 50:21
Because you're cruel.
Rod 50:22
Let's I just like to tell stories, man. I'm a storyteller. I'm like a minstrel.
Will 50:26
I'm like, I'm rooting for Ghost Rider right now. And you're gonna
Rod 50:31
how do you know it doesn't work? it's so cynical. So cynical. But this was the day like after all these crashes like not all we need to do on this bike right is go a few miles to prove it's possible. And to show that that Antony
Will 50:49
how does the computer balance itself? like Don't you need like things in your ears like little
Rod 50:58
Not tried? give your laptop a go.
Will 51:02
I throw my laptop on a bike all the time
Rod 51:06
need a better laptop. So it was like this is the day we're gonna we're gonna prove that it's at least possible. And it was the classic underdog, the kid with a crazy idea first self driving motorcycle is going to show the world Levandowski Anthony roses robot cycle out to the starting gate and sets it to go pass it off to a DARPA official who's supposed to hold it until it's time to launch like go boom.
Will 51:26
Please don't tell me it dies,
Rod 51:28
The flag goes down. Ghost Rider starts to roll forward.
Will 51:31
Nice.
Rod 51:31
The DARPA man, let's go
Will 51:33
yes.
Rod 51:34
And the bike falls over.
Will 51:42
Oh no
Rod 51:43
I'd like that moment. soul leaves your body because you get so sad for these people. It makes me feel good if I steal a bit of it. So it turns out and this is this is
Will 51:51
You've gotta give it a push like, like you can't just let go of the kid riding a bike, you gotta give it a bit of a push to
Rod 51:58
roll forward might have been slowed down.
Will 52:00
They say they say if it was a grass slope going down is the best way to let them go. And they accelerate with the bike and then they learn.
Rod 52:07
And when they fall over, they learn not to fall over. The story is not about children
Will 52:11
You can't just let someone go.
Rod 52:13
So it turns out according to sources, right before the demonstration, the crowd was cheering so much. We were so excited. We forgot to switch the bike from autonomous to drive by wire, whatever that means. So he's supposed to flick a switch that he didn't switch
Will 52:27
Did he get another go?
Rod 52:28
No DARPA's rules where once the vehicle starts to race, he couldn't accept any human help.
Will 52:35
God dammit.
Rod 52:36
And so Lewandowski you're so Levandowski goes on and says Oh, next time we'll have remember to flip the switch tattooed on my arm. There's no next time for him. Here's where by the time the last of the 15 vehicles have left the starting gate. The land around the slash x saloon was like a robotic graveyard. Sandstorm would go on the furthest it got you know, 7.32 miles or whatever nearly 12 kilometres but no winner was declared and there was no prize given because no one got through.
Will 53:04
You don't get no million dollars. You think DARPA gives money away.
Rod 53:07
They're not fools
Will 53:08
They're not made of money either.
Rod 53:09
No, they have no money. Always scrounge. Problem is we don't have any cash. We love your ideas. We want to support it. It doesn't sound communist. So there were headlines in like wired one of Wired's other articles foiled DARPA bots all fall down. And CNN wrote nobody won. Nobody even came close.
Will 53:26
Nobody won
Rod 53:27
so Tether the head of DARPA says okay, I got I got in the helicopter and I flew to prema flew to the end where all the TV crews were waiting to see the cars cross the finish line. It was 11 o'clock in the morning. The reporter said how's it going? I said well, it's over. one car 7.4 miles and started smoking blah blah blah blah, it's over. Reporting System What are you gonna do and he says we're gonna do it again. And this time it's gonna be a $2 million dollar price.
Will 53:53
Of course that was the problem what's the problem? The cars didn't want it enough. the cars didn't care whereas they care about 2 million
Rod 54:01
cars are very greedy
Will 54:02
Yeah, exactly. Not even going to get on the racetrack for less than 2 million
Rod 54:06
certainly not gonna get out of the chute. So basically, he said look, it was so successful and yet not really we got to do it again. We got to do it again.
Will 54:13
I get it No, no but but but going back to back to the original thing you had the lineup around the block that says something
Rod 54:18
people wanna have a crack. So as one source puts a DARPA was guilty you feel like guilty of anything. They didn't manage expectations. They care too much. Some people say DARPA cares too much
Will 54:25
They care too much. That's what DARPA is always guilty of
Rod 54:30
care. So they talked it up and they prepped for something to be big enormous huge like they were really yeah, there's one guy who was kind of going let's not get carried away even if they go a few miles it's cool but everything else like that fucking it's gonna be awesome. So the the challenge Operation Centre was a renovated six and a half 1000 seat arena
Will 54:50
Nothing is better than building stadiums. Like just when you're like okay, this is gonna be so good
Rod 55:02
So they put this it was at a place called Buffalo Bills resort and casino in prim their little place in Nevada, which was described as a cheap Vegas knockoff a half hour southwest of Vegas. So once the bots were launched the media was supposed to leave the slash x and bolt over the Buffalo Bills so they could quote
Will 55:23
so they would have been told it's gonna be an awesome party at the end Yeah, there's gonna be so many of these robotics teams and robotics nerds drink like fishes you're gonna you know make bags cash but none of them make
Rod 55:32
this is how they described. this was intended right? You're very close, they were gonna get over to Buffalo, hightail it over to Buffalo Bills to
Will 55:40
so slash x just as the breakfast menu. Whereas Buffalo Bills get breakfast menu.
Rod 55:44
So tequila shots.
Will 55:45
You know, like bacon and egg burgers. There's not a lot of money in that
Rod 55:48
and murder someone. Sure they probably made more money than Buffalo Bills. So apparently they are supposed to go to Buffalo Bills to nosh. Listen to a smooth rock cover band
Will 55:58
what?
Rod 55:58
And follow the race's progress on two huge screens, which are running snippets of footage that came through from the helicopters occasionally and waited the fish the finishing line outside of Buffalo Bills in the parking lot. That's what the media was supposed to do. So by noon, the Buffalo Bill Operation Centre had the quote, sad, pretentious look of an overproduced birthday party or a bar mitzvah for which the guests had all declined to show up.
Will 56:20
Oh, that's sad.
Rod 56:20
So it's all a bit lame.
Will 56:21
No, that's sad. said nothing is worse than no, no friends at your birthday party.
Rod 56:27
Nothing? What about cancer?
Will 56:30
No
Rod 56:30
you're a brave soul. Any friends listening? I feel if I have to choose between you and cancer
Will 56:37
I've heard stories of nothing makes my heart bleed more than
Rod 56:41
it is sad as someone who's like all that hope. It is sad. But look, even after all this. After all the debacle and stuff a lot of people saw positive. So a guy called Sebastian Thrun. He was a machine learning researcher at Stanford at the time. He said, Look, none of what's happening in self driving today this was written in 2017 would have happened without that original challenge of credit and unity. So got people psyched. It got the lowest level
Will 57:07
and you got people thinking motorbikes as well, like no one was thinking about no one was happy to how could it be possible? Again, again, laptops can't drive motorbikes and drive a car. But they exactly so change the world
Rod 57:19
is better than a laptop for Ghost Rider. The guy that said it was like Woodstock for nerds, who owned the loudspeaker company. He said, look at first the challenge. The first challenge the sensors were unreliable of their car, they would cause the vehicles to stop and vier off course, so a year after the grand challenge for their car, I started working on developing a new LIDAR sensor with a bunch of lasers give me 360 3d
Will 57:43
Cool cool cool
Rod 57:44
and DARPA pushed him to do this. So that came out of it. The technical lead on Sandstorms team. He was doing his PhD at the time the guy called Samsung. And Anthony, the Ghost Writer guy ended up working for Google self driving car team in around 2008. so there was a bunch of stuff that came out of it. there was people inspired, etc. So were there any more races, or any clock driven cars clocking any pendulum pendula? So October 2005, the second Grand Challenge was held. It was held in the desert in near California, Nevada State lining 132 Miles again,
Will 58:17
if you don't fucking tell me that Ghost Rider wins this, so I'm going to be really sad
Rod 58:21
Have you got a tissue? Ghost Rider didn't compete.
Will 58:24
Oh, no, not even Ghost Rider 2? Ghost Rider's son?
Rod 58:27
the sequel, his son of ghost. So it was another 132 miles the prize was 2 million. 32 teams got through all the preliminaries. Five completed. All but one went further than sandstorm.
Will 58:40
That's awesome. There you go. So five completed
Rod 58:42
There was a winner. So the Stanford racing team won in six hours and 50 minute 53 minutes.
Will 58:47
Give me a name.
Rod 58:48
Keith?
Will 58:49
No, no, it's like iron balls
Rod 58:54
Iron balls.
Will 58:57
Power Cock.
Rod 59:00
It's very Stanford. You went there, didn't you? post grad in wrong. But that was like one year later.
Will 59:09
That's awesome.
Rod 59:10
Okay, five completed, including within time,
Will 59:13
any motorbikes?
Rod 59:14
No. and finally, the one that I think is worth mentioning so 2007 Two years later, DARPA launched the DARPA Urban Challenge. Yes. 96
Will 59:22
drive over people
Rod 59:23
pretty much the autonomous vehicles had the drive in traffic.
Will 59:26
Do you get to vote? And say I don't want this in my town. I want to in another town
Rod 59:32
there's probably like in that you know, that fake town they set up to test nukes. But they had to be able to drive in traffic perform manoeuvres like merging, passing parking and going through sections murdering, merging, Same thing. And the Carnegie Mellon team so sandstorm, you know, evidence they did it in just over four hours and five others actually completed it. Yeah. Okay. So by 2007 people were nailing it then they were doing much harder things
Will 59:56
and listener. It's shocking. You know, you might be on The future and thinking we will but it's just this week. We all have autonomous cars right now in 2022. But you didn't know that. Yeah, exactly. This is this is the week when finally, everyone is driving an autonomous car.
Rod 1:00:12
I was gonna take mine home but it fucked off.
Will 1:00:14
I'm not pointing to that I'm pointing to your sources that you need to read out. I forgot about that. There you go. That's why I'm, that's my pointing gesture
Rod 1:00:20
is pointing to me and I thought he wants me to get a beer which is very nice. Okay. The sources so it's great book called A Brief History of motion from the wheel to the car to what comes next. It's a fun read
Will 1:00:30
From the Wheel to the car. There's a fair bit of stuff in there. And what comes next?
Rod 1:00:38
more cars, carishness,
Will 1:00:39
and just a small point of all that small point it doesn't have to be more cars.
Rod 1:00:44
No it doesn't. it could be planes. like that Kardashian who took a 12 minute flight because traffic
Will 1:00:50
Yeah, and fuck them. fucking tax them into oblivion.
Rod 1:00:54
I think fuck the Kardashians has mixed meaning.
Will 1:00:57
Look and I can mean both of those.
Rod 1:01:00
Yes, you can. You know why? Because You're your own person. Also the autonomous car chaos of the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge that's from Wired. World's first motor racing event had a 90 minute lunch break. That was the beginning stuff.
Will 1:01:15
it's very French. It's very French.
Rod 1:01:17
But of course we get hungry we must. Bread has not baked yet. Maybe it's going to be two hours.
Will 1:01:25
A little little like that. Everyone has a roast chicken.
Rod 1:01:29
It's gonna be wonderful. It's going to be what do you call it? spatchcocked Have you heard it?
Will 1:01:33
You know you know how Australian primary schools don't typically serve lunch but they do in the UK and America. But in French schools they sit down to a three course proper lunch with proper cutlery and proper..maybe it's a stereotyp, I don't know.
Rod 1:01:53
stereotypes are usually accurate though. Another one from pop side DARPA Grand Challenge 2004 DARPA'S debacle in the desert and on it goes on Wired. A lot of the quotes the direct quotes from players came from an oral history of the DARPA Grand Challenge. The gruelling Robot Race that launch the self driving car also Wired the grand challenge from DARPA and also DARPA Urban Challenge from DARPA.
Will 1:02:20
They go it's great now that we have cars that drive themselves and we don't have to do any of that anymore. And it's all thanks to 5000 francs in the desert of France. This has been the Wholesome Show we marvel at the whole of science
Rod 1:02:35
we do. We warm our hands by the whole of science
Will 1:02:37
and you can join us and maybe this is the moment we're our producer drops in something saying Give us five stars under review, because you should you should
Rod 1:02:47
this is new to us. We're working out this is our new format. Those of you heard before would know that
Will 1:02:51
and you get a trucker hat.
Rod 1:02:54
What do we have?
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