Do you expect to name a winner this year?
Tether: Yes, I do -- assuming that they don't flunk their driving test while they're doing it. I don't expect vehicles to have mechanical failures, I really don't. Like I said, the roads are smooth. They're just typical urban roads. There are no real tricks. It's just as if you were driving around in one of the suburbs of the Bay Area.
Can you tell us how this challenge came about?
The autonomous vehicle really came about for two reasons. One was that it's a serious mission for the military and that if we can reduce the number of people who are driving convoys in a place like Iraq or Afghanistan, we would definitely reduce the infrastructure to take care of those people. The second reason is that we are worried here at DARPA about the food stock: that the kids today in the United States don't seem to be going into engineering and science like they used to. Now, a lot of people say this is because there's not enough money and I don't believe that's the case. I believe the reason is that we haven't given them exciting things to do.
Everybody owns a car in the United States; you can buy these computers commercially; the sensors are even available commercially; and even the actuators to make the car do what you want are somewhat available commercially because of the handicapped market. The only thing missing now is somebody's imagination to create that secret sauce. In DARPA's arrogant way, we were trying to re-create the man to the moon mission, which created an enormous amount of excitement in this country. We couldn't give a contract to generate that excitement. And [excitement], I believe, is what was needed to have people be interested in science and engineering. I'll tell you, that really has paid off, I mean we have changed the lives of tens of thousands of kids.
We have shown that it can be done, and when somebody shows you that something can be done, you get brave about going and trying something on your own.
Are we close to reaching the military's goal of replacing one-third of ground vehicles with unmanned cars by 2015? And on the flip side, are you excited about seeing this technology emerge in the consumer car market, like many of the teams are working toward?
Tether: There's no question that it has a consumer value. And in fact, if you really think about it, what it will do in the consumer market is the same thing that we're looking at doing in the military market and that is to save lives.
So do you think we're on track to meet that 2015 goal?
Tether: I do. I believe that the military right now is using autonomous vehicles more than they have, but not necessarily direct descendants of any of ours. We have shown that it can be done. And when somebody shows you that something can be done, you get brave about going and trying something on your own. General Dynamics, for example, has a semi-autonomous vehicle that they're selling to the military -- semi-autonomous in that if it gets into trouble, it sort of calls home and a person helps it out. The Israelis are using semi-autonomous vehicles for patrolling the Gaza strip.
A lot of professors say that the DARPA of the '60s and '70s doesn't exist anymore because funds have been radically cut. Do you agree with that assessment?
Tether: No. In the '60s, DARPA's budget was US$200 million or US$300 million, and most of that money was tied up in things like Ballistic Missile Defense. DARPA's budget today is US$3 billion. Now, even with all your inflation figures, that just doesn't inflate the US$3 billion. We have a lot of money and we spend it again on areas where we believe [it] will make the greatest impact.
We look for ideas that will make an enormous impact, and then we fund them not to bring them all the way, but to prove the technical feasibility. So anytime somebody gives you that [assessment of DARPA], you really need to ask them the following question: how many ideas have they submitted to DARPA that has not been accepted?
So what R&D concepts from DARPA are helping to protect troops now serving in Iraq?
We're doing things that range all the way from prosthetics that [an amputee can control] by his brain to developing techniques [that] will allow people to survive a blood loss of over 60 percent.
What are the top three advances to come out of DARPA in the last five years would you say?
Tether: Let's see, we've revolutionised the whole computer science industry by moving into cognitive processing, that is, computers that learn you as opposed to you having to learn them. Stanford Research, by the way, in Menlo Park is a major contractor in that area. We've also done a lot in biology, again for finding ways for people out in the battlefield to be able to survive their environment.
Then wireless, I guess. If you take your cell phone, you might think that you're wireless and you are. But there's a big infrastructure called towers that really make it work. And what we proved and have developed is the ability to have no infrastructure and still have total cellular wireless type of communication. That's important from a military viewpoint because when we go into an area, we don't have time to build the towers. Now that's also going to be a big commercial thing because if somebody doesn't have to build the infrastructure to have a wireless network, that means that the cost for it is much less than somebody who does, (and it) gives them a great price advantage. Those are three, but I'm not supposed to have favourites.
Will there be more Grand Challenges?
Tether: We don't know. We'll evaluate that after this one and see where we go from there.
