I gave a few visits to the RoboDeveloper's conference the past few days. It was a modest sized affair, one of the early attempts to make a commercial robot development conference (it's been more common to be academic in the past.) The show floor was modest, with just 3 short aisles, and the program modest as well, but Robocars were an expanding theme.

Sebastian Thrun (of the Stanford "Stanley" and "Junior" Darpa Grand Challenge teams) gave the keynote. I've seen him talk before but his talk is getting better. Of course he knows just about everything in my essays without having to read them. He continues (as I do) to put a focus on the death toll from human driving, and is starting to add an energy plank to the platform.

While he and I believe Robocars are the near-term computer project with the greatest benefit, the next speaker, Maja Mataric of USC made an argument that human-assistance robots will be even bigger. They are the other credible contender, though the focus is different. Robocars will save a million young people from death who would have been killed by human driving. Assist robots will improve and prolong the lives of many millions more of the aged who would die from ordinary decrepitude. (Of course, if we improve anti-aging drugs that might change.) Both are extremely worthy projects not getting enough attention.

Mataric said that while people in Robotics have been declaring "now is the hot time" for almost 50 years, she thinks this time she really means it. Paul Saffo, last weekend at Convergence 08, declared the same thing. He thinks the knee of the Robotics "S Curve" is truly upon us.

On the show floor, and demonstrated in a talk by Bruce Hall (of Velodyne Lidar and of Team DAD in the Darpa Grand Challenges) was Velodyne's 64 line high resolution LIDAR. This sensor was on almost all the finishers in the Urban Challenge.

While very expensive today ($75,000) Hall believes that if he had an order for 10 million it would cost only hundreds without any great advances. With a bit of Moore's law tech, it could even be less in short order.

Their LIDAR sees out to 120 meters. Hall says it could be tuned to go almost 300 meters, though of course resolution gets low out there. But even 120 meters gives you the ability to stop (on dry road) at up to 80 mph. Of course you need a bit of time to examine a potential obstacle before you hit the brakes so hard, so the more range the better, but this sensor is able to deliver with today's technology.

The LIDAR uses a class 1 (eye-safe) infrared laser and Hall says it works in any amount of sunlight, and of course in darkness. He also says having many together on the road does not present a problem and did not at the Urban Challenge when cars came together. It might require something fancier to avoid deliberate jamming or interference. I suspect the military will pay for that technology to be developed.

This LIDAR, at a lower cost, seems good enough for a Whistlecar today, combined, perhaps with tele-valet remote operation. The LIDAR is good enough to drive at modest urban speeds (25mph) and not hit anything that isn't trying to hit you. A tele-valet could get the whistlecar out of jams as it moves to drivers, filling stations and parking spots.

These forecasts of cheap, long-range LIDAR make me very optimistic about Whistlecars if we can get them approved for use in limited areas, notably parking lots, airports, gated communities and the like. We may be able to deploy this even sooner than some expect.