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FIGURE 4. Boeing Phantom Eye UAV.
unsuspecting people in an
unauthorized manner, but reliable
reports reveal that these illegal
occurrences are few in number.
Aerial surveillance is extremely
valuable in military and battle
conditions, and not all military UAVs
carry weapons. Boeing’s unmanned
Phantom surveillance drone shown
in Figure 4 is capable of flying over
battlefields for four days straight.
Powered by two highly modified
Ford Fusion 2. 3 liter diesel engines
modified to run on hydrogen, the
150 foot wingspan plane can carry
1,900 pounds of liquid hydrogen
fuel and over 500 pounds of
equipment. By flying as high as
65,000 feet using superchargers to
compress the thin air at altitude,
the UAV can be ‘on station’ 24/7 to
assist battle theater commanders.
Hummer shown in Figure 5
(developed by Carnegie Mellon’s Red
Whittaker) — managed to drive
autonomously a bit over seven of the
150 miles before getting stuck in an
embankment. Most vehicles died
before even starting or within a mile
or so of the starting line.
from Carnegie Mellon won the race in
four hours and 10 minutes, with
Stanford’s ‘Junior’ close behind at four
hours and 29 minutes. Virginia Tech’s
‘Victor Tango’ came in third at four
hours and 36 minutes. In just three
years’ time, autonomous driving had
developed the navigation software,
sensors, and other various visual
systems to successfully navigate within
an urban environment with other
vehicles close by.
Were the naysayers happy? Of
course not. There are still many who
fear such technology. Those of us in
robotics cheered for these
accomplishments.
Black Boxes in
Automobiles
Another contentious subject
relates to the black boxes being
installed in modern cars that can
record and ultimately reveal a
human driver’s actions within the
vehicle, just before an accident.
These are not like the more
sophisticated devices required by
the FAA in airliners, but are a bit
more simplistic. The information
gleaned from the device’s memory
can tell police and investigators just
how fast the driver was going,
whether or not a seat belt was being
worn, when the brake was applied,
and other crash details.
It’s no big deal for good and/or
accident-free drivers, but detractors
fear the technology will just escalate
into more ‘big brother’ scenarios.
(Maybe one day, we’ll have a court
session where the black box in a
human’s car will testify against an
autonomous automobile’s computer in
an accident case.)
FIGURE 5. DARPA Grand Challenge
2004 Red Team.
80 SERVO 06.2013
Autonomous
Automobiles Come
of Age
Let us leave the contentious
subject of drones behind us, and look
at an emerging technology that will
soon bring hungry lawyers out in
force: self-driving automobiles. Two
recent articles — one in Wired
Magazine entitled “Leave the Driving
to Us” by Clive Thompson, and the
other in Time Magazine entitled
“Regulate the Robots” by Massimo
Calabresi — brought forth legal
implications of robot cars on city
streets.
True autonomously driven cars
made their first legitimate appearances
in DARPA’s 150 mile off-road Grand
Challenge back in March 2004. One
vehicle — the Red Team’s modified
After the race was over, I heard
several newscasters lamenting, “If
these cars cannot even drive more
than seven miles on a protected off-road course in the desert, how can we
ever trust robot cars on the roads that
we drive each day?”
In 2005, the second Grand
Challenge had five of the 23 final
entrants complete the entire 132 mile
course. The race was won by Stanford
University’s ‘Stanley.’ Whittaker’s Red
Team had two entrants that finished
only 20 minutes behind Stanford’s six
hour and 54 minute winning time.
Though shorter than the first race, the
2005 event had mountain passes and
tunnels to traverse. Certainly, “robot”
cars had come a long way.
Legal Implications
So, I’ve covered different types of
robots that might have legal
implications in their use — with or
without humans. Drones seem to be
the main target of citizen’s rights
groups at the moment. These groups
have cited 175 children and 535
civilians among the 2,348 ‘other’
