"Danger. Danger Will Robinson!"
Robotic vehicle Sandstorm is one of CMU's entries competing in the PBS documentary, "NOVA: "The Great Robot Race."
Click photo for larger image.
'Nova: The Great Robot Race'
When: 8 p.m. tomorrow on PBS.
Host: John Lithgow.
No, not the metallic talking humanoids of science-fiction fantasies like the TV classic "Lost in Space." We're talking the real thing: robotic devices built to perform specific tasks, designed for autonomous operation, programmed to "think" for themselves.
The potential uses of robots that make strategic and tactical decisions independent of human intervention are virtually limitless, from mundane sewage maintenance to risky mining operations to dangerous military convoy missions to the spectacular exploration of the moon, Mars and beyond.
Recognizing the possibilities, the Pentagon has dangled a $2 million carrot in the form of a contest race called The Grand Challenge. Outfitted with groundbreaking artificial intelligence, laser-guided vision, GPS navigation and 3-D mapping systems, robot vehicles attempt to complete a 132-mile overland course. The caveat: Once the driverless robots start, no human can help them to adjust course, accelerate, diagnose and correct problems, stop or flip themselves upright if they tumble.
Nearly 200 teams from around the world entered the second Grand Challenge last October. Among them were two robot SUVs hammered into shape at Carnegie Mellon University's robotics labs. The international press covered highlights of the high-tech race in which 23 vehicles survived the qualifying rounds. Only four finished the race.
But a year before the race began, a PBS film crew headed by Pittsburgh filmmaker Joe Seamans began recording the progress of two CMU teams. "The Great Robot Race," produced for "Nova" by Boston's WGBH, airs tomorrow.
PBS suggests that having a film crew chronicling the creation of the CMU robots might be akin to videotaping the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk.
"I don't know about Kitty Hawk," says Seamans. "Only history would know something like that. But from the start, we knew this was important, that what we were filming was going to be a first."
Seamans says he got tapped for the job because of his "National Geographic" documentaries, a quarter century of work for WQED and, as a Pittsburgher, his proximity to the project. Roughly a half-dozen Pittsburgh film and TV veterans assisted him, including director of photography Mark Knobil, Chris Strollo, Dino DiStefano, Chris Ripper, David Cohen, Janet Smith, Glenn Syska and Susan Hartford.
"The hardest thing about this was not knowing what the outcome of the race would be," says Seamans. "Not that that's the most important thing in the film, but you never knew when something important was about to happen. Even the people building the robots didn't know when something they said or did was going to be important. This is research, discovery. Who knows when something that seems meaningless might become a pivotal moment in the history of robotics?"
"The Grand Challenge was a watershed event in robotics," says Red Whittaker, professor of robotics and director of the Field Robotics Center at CMU. "It was taking robots from the laboratory to the world. An event like that is like Kitty Hawk or Woodstock -- there really is never another chance to do it the first time."
Whittaker supervised the CMU robotics teams as they built separate autonomous robots designed to navigate, self-correct and, in effect, think their way through a hazardous course that included a treacherous mountain pass.
"There were plenty of technical breakthroughs," says Whittaker. "These machines sense and think and act. A lot of times the thinking takes the form of planning where they'll go and how they'll get there and what they'll do when they get there."
Without spoiling it for viewers, it's safe to say that Seamans builds more suspense than you might think possible in "The Great Robot Race," and the race itself is at times exciting. It's easy to personify the robots even though there's no person there.
"A contest like this changes our belief state," says Whittaker. "Lindbergh flying across the Atlantic -- that was a contest. Before that, people didn't think you could fly across the ocean, they certainly didn't think trans-Atlantic commercial transportation was really possible. This race and this show lift the technology from the lab and bring it to life."
