Europe's Robotic Challenge

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Besides the challenging nature of these complex tasks, the way in which contestants will be given their routes has also prompted some people to suggest that the European version will actually be more difficult than the U.S. Grand Challenge. In the United States, contestants are given a series of global positioning waypoints -- like GPS breadcrumbs -- leading them along the route. In the European event the only information teams will be given is an aerial image of the terrain with a route roughly sketched out.

This makes all the difference, says Roland Siegwart, whose team at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland is submitting an adapted Daimler-Chrysler Smart Car in the non-urban trial. In the Grand Challenge the task was more about travelling between GPS waypoints in as straight a line as possible, with some minor obstacle manoeuvres, he says. The European contestants have more freedom to plan their routes and use their sensors to map the environment for the safest or most efficient path.

But not everyone is convinced that the European version is harder. "The Grand Challenge was an amazing endurance test," says Sebastian Thrun, who led the Stanford University team that won the Grand Challenge last October. In comparison, the European trials are extremely short, he notes, so that it is difficult to make a straight comparison.

The fact that European entrants do not have to be autonomous -- semi-autonomous and even remotely operated vehicles can also be entered -- may also lead some robot purists to favor the Grand Challenge. "From my point of view, a robot should be fully autonomous," says Siegwart. But, for military purposes, robots often have a human in the loop, he adds, such is with unmanned aerial vehicles.

One way to settle this debate might have been to enter "Stanley," the Stanford winner from last year's Grand Challenge -- but this isn't going to happen. "I tried to participate but was denied access," says Thrun. Being a native-born German now holding dual U.S. citizenship, in theory, Thrun should have been able to participate, since the rules only state that one must be a European citizen in order to qualify.