DARPA grand challenge visit

2007/11/03: I'm at the DARPA grand challenge and it just ended. 6 finalist teams finished including MIT, Stanford and CMU. MIT and Cornell's Skynet vehicle came in quit a bit after the other's and my guess is Stanford University and/or CMU will be declared the winners in the top 2 spots (getting $1M and $2M each).

DARPA is the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the same organized that really did sponsor the birth of the Internet and the supporting IP-based protocols that make it all run (originally called the DARPANET, and then the ARPANet). The idea of "Grand Challenge" events has become very popular recently as a technique for spurring applied computer science and engineering research. In this case, a prestigious set of prizes of $2 million, $1M and $500K were fronted by DARPA for vehicles that could drive safely in an (artificial) urban environment. This is a followup to an earlier challenge for outdoor driving. Note that that actual money itself is probably not the spur for any of the serious teams, since the actual investment in building a winning entry probably substantially exceeds the expected financial return. Rather, it's a chance to do some very visible ground-breaking research, and to stimulate lots of energetic research activity. Getting in the good books with DARPA specifically probably doesn't hurt either. The benefit to the reputations of the teams (both the people and the institutions) that do well is enormous. Based on a what one of the teams told me, the equipment on their vehicle was worth about $500,000. This is actually less than a quote I heard previously. Of course, much or all of that was presumably donated and it does not include the huge amount of labor or custom engineering. All the vehicles depended heavily on a large suite of LIDAR sensors, and there was apparently fairly limited use of computer vision, in comparison. LIDAR is distance measurement based on the time-of-flight for a laser beam.

Most of the teams sported the impressive rotating Velodyne sensors. It spins rapidly and uses 64 separate laser beams that together return about one million measurements per second (it can also run at a higher data rate and rotate at up to 900 RPM). This means at least a fair amount of computation of crunch that data. It's interesting that a few years ago such sensors were much talked about, and one was produced in Canada by Hymark. This should help make the Velodyne much more popular (I'd love one), but they're quite expensive (i.e. more costly than the basic cars they are mounted on.) Stanford has a rotating Velodyne on top, but also uses about 5 other brands of LIDAR sensor as well a microwave radar. They use two different kinds of SICK-brand lasers in various configurations, which were a mainstay of their prior outdoor challenge vehicle.

2007/11/05: The team from Carnegie -Mellon University was declared the winning team, with Stanford getting second place. As far as I know the precise reason for this is not available. That's because the precise scoring function was not announced in advance.

The general rules for the event were defined in advance, such as observing the rules of the road (such as stopping at stop signs), avoiding collisions, and staying under the speed limit. The final detailed scoring, however, was not determined in advance and it looks like Tony Tether from DARPA and/or his associates will make the determination taking into account subjective factors. This makes some sense since there are many subtle factors that characterize a good driver, especially a robot driver. For example, the MIT vehicle tended to hesitate a lot which led to legal but inelegant behavior. The evaluation needed to be flexible to take this kind of thing into account.

Out-and-out collisions, such as the one experienced by Georgia Tech's vehicle were grounds for elimination, and this kind of thing is why the slate of eleven finalist robots was reduced to a slate of only six that finished the competition. The eleven finalists in this event were all that remained from a much larger field of 53 potential participants who were eliminated in pre-trail evaluations, site visits, and qualification tests.

The race took place at an abandoned air field at Victorville, CA. DARPA constructed a small set of roads resembling a hunk of artificial town. While it was quite simple, it still cost an estimated $21M to build. This is probably because the evaluation area included extensive video surveillance of the whole area so the performance could be evaluated. It also included seating for spectators, an information tent, and a media tent.

The event was interesting both for the technical details, as well as to observe the infrastructure and social context, and to be able to congratulate some friend who were involved. Lastly, I can say I was there when the robot uprising was seeded.

	Georgia Tech computing infrastructure in the trunk of the car.
	Me and Dave Meger (former student of mine, now at UBC) with all the vehicles in the background.
	Indoor area for viewing the event. This room was pretty full most of the time, and showed footage from inside the course that was not directly viewable.
	Interior of the Velodyne HDL-64E Lidar (laser) range sensor used on many of the vehicles.
	Half the Stanford team, with Sebastian (blue shirt), the overall team leader, in the foreground. They had just been instructed to cheer (which I think came very naturally).
	More of the Stanford team, with Mike Montemerlo (blue hat), software lead, near the front.
	Side view of the Stanford vehicle. Several different laser systems can be seen. The Velodyne is on top.
	MIT vehicle just finished and being parked.

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McGill in top dozen world research schools

McGill University managed to break into the top dozen schools in the world, according to the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES). This is one of the more rigorous and large-scale university ranking exercises, which spans universities from all over the world.

The result is a ranking of universities the world over based on research related criteria. This is rather different than ranking system than used on the Canadian MacLeans survey and several similar surveys where most of the emphasis on highly subjective or hotly debated factors that are thought to be important for undergraduate education. The objective of the rating was that 60% of the overall rank is is awarded based on objective quality indices for research faculty. International reputation based on a survey of other academics accounted for 40% of the score, and 20% was based on citations as measured by Thomson ISI's database. Of course, the specific people used for the indices are a source of bias, and one criticism is that this survey includes business leaders, which some academics find objectionable.

No other Canadian school ranked as highly, but of Canadian schools the University of Toronto and UBC both did well (45th and 33rd places). Schools that did better than McGill include Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, Yale, MIT and CalTech. Some pretty distinguished places did worse. The rankings cover all areas, so schools with a more specialized focus had a handicap. For example, Tokyo University came in 17th, but I believe it did better in the sciences that in the overall ranking. Carnegie Mellon University came in 20th, but is almost always ranked in the top 3 for computer science.


Of course like all such rankings there is plenty of debate over the precise criteria used and their relative weights. No doubt the precise ordering would vary if the relative importance of the criteria were changed, and many alternative re-weightings are reasonable. For example, National University of Singapore well from 19 to 33 this year, but I doubt the school itself changed that fundamentally. UC Berkeley also fell quite a bit (to 22nd place). Whatever flaws there are, this is a pretty solid ranking system, preferred methodologically to the ranking in, say, US News and World Report (although I have to confess that USNews results for computer science are quite reasonable, with Carnegie Mellon University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and University of California–Berkeley being tied for top spot).

In summary, the numbers are interesting and it's nice to see McGill moving progressively upwards in successive years (in 2005 McGill was ranked 24th, which was still pretty impressive).

  

Jobs up in computer science, C the dominant language

These charts show recent job trends, and computer science is trending up. So is C, as well as Python. There is also a chart showing what programming languages are mentioned explicitly. Surprisingly, C remains a dominant theme. Python has been exhibiting a clear upward trend, but it's hard to make out on this figure since the absolute value is pretty small comared to C. This data is based on searches of job postings, so there is room for debate for its depth and reliability. For example, I suspect that many "high end" jobs don't bother to mention specific programming languages, yet there are doubtless expectations regarding what language will be used in a workplace. For example, we use Matlab in my lab, but I never bother to mention it as a selection criterion.



The following chart shows the frequency of occurrence of various academic background phrases. Note that the absolute number of jobs may not be the same as the ease of getting a job, since there are both demand and supply factors in the marketplace. If there is only one person with a background in statistical anthropology, just two job postings might be more than enough.
Another factor to take into account is bias in the sources used to compile this data. I don't know how they stack up, but the figures should be taken with a grain of salt.

  

Remote control robots in IRAQ

Robots are on patrol in IRAQ, and they are currently armed (i.e carrying loaded machine guns). They are not actually autonomous, but remote controlled, so I am a bit ambivalent about really calling them robots. They do carry M249 SAW machine guns made by Fabrique Nationale US (the US arm of a Belgian company [provenance corrected thanks to a comment, below]). They also have the capacity to carry grenade launchers and other product-dispensing apparatus. The robot does not seem to be the most stable one I've seen, and it uses pretty conventional drive mechanisms, but it's obviously very robust. In many ways the actual robot technology itself seems somewhat dated compared to what the research community is working on, but the application in the field is almost unique. The vehicle is made by Foster-Miller, and is part of a package called SWORDS (Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Direct- action System). Foster Miller is a large company that has supplied robots such as this for bomb disposal (EOD) application for some time.

According to Foster Miller the robot was "... evaluated by the 5th Special Forces in Iraq and three systems have completed evaluation with the 3rd Infantry Division and [were] deployed to Iraq in 2007."

The M249 machine gun is fully automatic, has a maximum range of about 1000 meters (3281 feet). When loaded with the "preferred" ammunition of M855 Ball (whatever that means), it is suitable for use against light materiel targets and personnel. The military expects to use it in the near future to dispense deadly force. When this happens, it will be a dangerous precedent, but one that was obviously inevitable and which is a natural extension of existing technologies (such as drone aircraft).

  

Canadian DMCA: urgent call to participate!

A new proposal regarding Canadian copyright legislation is coming. It will have serious implications for computer data in
particular, as well as lots of other issues related to information exchange. Canadians need to consider it and speak out (against it).

[ Update: Dec 12, 2007: The law was not introduced as expected and will be deferred until at least January 2008. Let's hope was due to popular expression of dissent. This is the time to contact your MP. ]

(Shortcut: Email letter generator form here, but read on for tips on how to draft and where to send a more-effective real paper letter.)

Quoting from a recent article in the Globe and Mail newspaper:
"A new copyright law is coming.
Ottawa copyright circles are buzzing with hints that the government is preparing its new revised copyright bill, and will be tabling it soon, perhaps as early as next week.
And the buzz is that the new law will basically be a copy of the controversial U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)" There are also rumors that the Canadian proposal is worse than the DMCA as it omits some of the exceptions in the DMCA, as well as leaving out some positive aspects of the DCMA as well.


Full article here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/ servlet/story/RTGAM.20071127.WBcyberia20071127170629/ WBStory/WBcyberia/

The DMCA
prohibits not only the downloading of commercial music files, but also allows web sites to be served "take down" notices with minimal procedural overhead, and prohibits the exchange of information which could be used to circumvent digital rights management (even if it has other
uses as well).

The DMCA has generally been regarded as being bad for consumers, bad for science and bad for freedom of expression, but aimed at serving the interests of large media conglomerates. Interestingly, it seems not even to have helped them, in terms of actual revenue generation. See the documents Unintended Consequences: Seven Years under the DMCA [eff.org] to hear about the experience in the USA (including the chill on free expression and scientific research, and the way it impedes innovation and education).

One of the very bad aspects of the DMCA is the anti-circumvention clauses. These restrict technologies that could be used to circumvent (defeat) anti-copying mechanisms, and these clauses can be interpreted quite broadly. This includes a prohibition of exchange of information that could be construed as promoting circumvention, and seems to extend as far as prohibiting you from opening up your own devices (in hardware or software) that might be used for copy protection. If I can't get my HD-DVD player to put high-quality pictures on my old TV set, but I post a trick that explains how to do it, I'd be in trouble since the manufacturer presumably didn't want me to be able to do this. In fact, I'd be in trouble for doing it even in the privacy of my own home, even if I didn't tell anybody. [This is just an example, I don't actually own any HD-DVD or high-def video gear.] There are worse examples yet, but they get more technical.

Michael Geist, the Canadian law professor & CRC Chair also
has an interesting discussion of several issues [michaelgeist.ca]
and suggests: "There is every indication this legislation will be a complete sell-out to U.S. government and lobbyist demands" which is pretty consistent with what I have heard personally from an Intellectual Property expert who is a personal friend (who may give a CS colloquium here next term).

( full reference http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2419/125/ )

One good aspect of the DMCA is that it circumscribes the responsibility of
operators of sites where arbitrary people can post material, rather than making the operator personally responsible for everything that gets posted. Let's hope this pro-freedom-of-expression aspect of the DMCA makes it into the Canadian legislation
as well (to be announced soon), but the rumor and my inference
is that it is absent.

The problem seems to be part of an ongoing and pernicious erosion of the public information rights in Canada (as well as the USA). Margaret-Ann Wilkinson (lawyer, ethicist) observes: "... following the appearance of the Charter of Rights for Creators, groups representing user interests were persuaded that copyright reform was being packaged as a two-phase process. The first phase was to be Bill C-60 which, when enacted in 1988, created the amendments to the Copyright Act that largely favored copyright owners. A second phase was promised, which was to focus on the needs of information users and intermediaries. The promised second phase, however, failed to appear in a timely manner." [from "Filtering the Flow from the Fountains of Knowledge"]

Personally, despite this erosion, I have been proud and relieved that we didn't have legislation like the DMCA here. Furthermore, even the US DCMA allows limited forms of
duplications of a work in order to create a parody. Canada's law does not even include that exception, nor other
important exceptions like being allowed to record a television program for subsequent playback.

If this interests you at all, you may want to browse the links above and then make your voice heard. Personally, I think legislation is a terrible and disastrous move.

If you think this is problematic, as I do, Geist has been generous enough to post a list of 30 things you can do to express your distaste for this initiative.

The link is

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/1447/273/ (30 Days of DRM: 30 Things You Can Do)

There is another interesting post regarding the action of the CAUT in this regard. See the blog from Howard Knopf [blogspot.com].

( I've been told this issue was also mentioned is Slashdot recently. )