DARPA announced successful tests of its new autonomous vehicles on Wednesday, all part of the agency’s Robotic Autonomy in Complex Environments with Resiliency (RACER) program. And while the tests sound impressive, we found ourselves transfixed by one little visual detail: The tank’s glowing green eyes.
The RACER Heavy Platform (RHP) vehicles are enormous, weighing in at 12 tons and measuring 20 feet long. The vehicles are programmed using the Textron M5 base system, already used in many driverless vehicles by the U.S. Army, and are meant to complement the RACER Fleet Vehicles (RFVs) which are comparatively small at just 2 tons and 11 feet long.
The
vehicle
tests,
aided
by
teams
from
the
University
of
Washington
and
NASA’s
Jet
Propulsion
Laboratory,
happened
at
military
training
sites
in
Texas
back
in
late
2023,
but
are
just
being
announced
by
DARPA
today.
Videos
from
the
Texas
tests
are
now
available
on
YouTube,
demonstrating
the
fully
autonomous
driving
of
these
gigantic
vehicles
in
off-road
conditions.
And
again,
we
can’t
stop
staring
into
the
vehicle’s
glowing
green
eyes.
They
give
the
entire
demonstration
an
almost
Pixaresque
feel.
Just
look
at
that
little
face.
RACER Experiment 4 — RACER Heavy Platform (RHP) Highlight Video
What’s the deal with the green eyes? Tim Haynes, the director of public affairs at DARPA told Gizmodo in an email, “....it’s just an indicator light to show the status of the vehicle. Green = it’s on and in autonomy mode.”
DARPA
also
posted
a
new
video
to
YouTube
showing
the
smaller
RFV
tests,
which
were
notable
for
their
adaptability
in
an
autonomous
mode.
The
teams
running
the
tests
had
no
experience
in
the
area,
making
it
as
close
to
fresh
for
them
as
possible.
The
goal,
of
course,
was
to
see
how
these
types
of
vehicles
could
perform
in
a
completely
foreign
environment.
“Using
fully
unoccupied
RFVs,
RACER
demonstrated
autonomous
movement
within
a
15
square
mile
terrain
area
including
highly
diverse
ground
vegetation
cover,
trees,
bushes,
rocks,
slopes,
obstructed
ditches,
and
creek
crossings
typical
of
the
varied,
complex
Texas
terrain
familiar
to
armored
maneuver,”
DARPA
said
in
its
press
release.
RACER Experiment 4 - Cockpit view of an autonomous off-road run in TX
DARPA has been working on autonomous vehicles for decades, starting in earnest back in 1983 with the Strategic Computing Initiative. And it’s incredible how far the U.S. military has come. During testing, the Autonomous Land Vehicle of 1985 would get confused with just a little bit of snow on the road. But that kind of obstacle is clearly no issue here in the 2020s.
“Having two radically different types of vehicles helps us advance towards RACER’s goal of platform agnostic autonomy in complex, mission-relevant off-road environments that are significantly more unpredictable than on-road conditions,” Stuart Young, RACER program manager, said on Wednesday.
Unfortunately,
it
doesn’t
appear
the
RFV
has
any
cool
color
modes.
At
least
none
that
we
can
see
like
the
larger
vehicle’s
glowing
green
eyes.
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