Logs
You are cordially invited to one last gathering in the Red Team HQ (aka the Planetary Robotics Building) for a sneak preview of NOVA's “The Great Robot Race”, airing Tuesday, March 28 at 8pm on WQED (and local PBS stations nationwide). As many of you know, NOVA was with the Red Team for much of the journey to the finish line and this is the product of that great effort.
The preview event will take place on Tuesday 3/21 from 6 to 8PM. For directions to campus, please see http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/info/directions/index.php - Red Team HQ is the unmarked building on the left of Newell Simon Hall on the map. Parking on campus is open after 5PM unless otherwise marked.
Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions. We look forward to seeing you! michgitt@cmu.edu
On March 28, PBS's NOVA will air the story of the DARPA Grand Challenge, featuring Sandstorm and H1ghlander. For times and local station information, visit NOVA, The Great Robot Race.
The vision of robot city is that robots will share the work of development. There is rubble to clear, earth to move, road to grade and a "great wall" to dismantle. The surface is demolition waste from old coke ovens, so the site is barren and lifeless. The upside is that it is a dream site for the development and testing of robots for the working world. The downside is a huge agenda for site development beyond the demands of R&D...site development like shaping land, building soil and bringing the place to life. This will start rough and take years.
We will take on the customary challenges that come with site remediation.. Like planning, permitting, financial resourcefulness, and the unseen surprises that arise in the course of reclaiming land... plus the additional, profound limitations of what automated machines can't yet do. Robotic startup might include some site-survey, land-levelling, lime-spreading and setting of fence-posts to bound the operation. Intermediate development might cut-and-level a hill, shape and grade the site, and remove a stone perimeter wall. Finish work would build topsoil, landscape and establish grass. Maintenance, mowing and snow removal are perennial agendas. The challenges and ambitions will drive technical development, and progressively capable machine automation will pace the site development. The R&D is the day job and the site work is a side hustle.
We are starting now with whatever we've got and whatever robots can do..and to escalate as we build robotic capabilities and build robot city over time. Here is a primordial website..
The "site" button has a photo of the land and another of "Junction Hollow" that connects the CMU campus to Robot City..
The "gallery" button leads to a "pushing" video that shows a pair of automated HUMMERs being led around the site.. Guided by the human who is driving the middle HUMMER. The video combines robot action with a glimpse of the land.
At Robot City robots will handle day-to-day activities like snow-clearing, grounds-keeping, security and cleaning. The mission of Robot City is to move Robots from laboratory to life. To do so, people work on robots and robots work for people at a facility with expansive land and diverse outdoor enterprise...but without the contrivances and limitations of laboratories and research centers that characterized the early decades of robot development.
Robot research and enterprise are alive and well, so why is Robot City essential to the future of robotics, and how is it distinct from what has come before? Robots for the working world must evolve and prove themselves in the working world. Robot City is that world. The evolution of field robotics requires the persistent, uncontrived field work that comes from immersive development that is physically interleaved with real robot operations.
The great questions are no longer whether robots can sense, think and act. The next generation of robots must evolve to become relevant, reliable, safe, independent and useful coworkers. That calls for an era of development and refinement to drive solutions into the world. The technical agenda is to develop the performance and usability to move automation from laboratory to life. That mattered at some point in the evoluation of cars and computers, and it now matters for robotics. Robot City will evolve technologies and tools to overcome the barriers that thwart the adoption of robots by markets and by society.
Robot City mixes the best of research with the best of industry in a field setting that facilitates, calibrates and drives development. Robot City is occupying a brownfield close to Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute.
>> The Heinz Endowments, "Former LTV-Hazelwood Site Purchased by Nonprofit Group"