The above photos are from I09.
Don't even bother to go to the DARPA website....I don't quite get those guys....what is the purpose? To show that some guys with a wrench, time and money could design a dune buggy? Me and my buddies could do that...but this is so far from being a combat vehicle that it isn't funny.
This was a waste of time and taxpayers dollars.
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ReplyDeleteMy understanding is that the vehicle isn't the purpose of the program, it was just a way to test a "crowd sourced" development model for a physical thing, as opposed to a software program. The goal is to make development faster and cheaper and more responsive to user/outsider input by using a new process.
ReplyDeleteSo, if this is actually a success, the point is that the government built a dune buggy in about the same time and for a similar amount of money to what you and your buddies could do instead of taking five times as long and spending ten times as much like it usually would. I'm skeptical, but if DARPA can cut a lot of development times even in half that would be a huge deal.
i disagree.
ReplyDeletei get the 'stated purpose' but in reality what this is is a social networking of an engineering problem.
they're mutually exclusive enterprises. if you want to assemble a team of vehicle engineers and have them design a vehicle to a list of specifications is one thing. but to design a vehicle based on the inputs of facebook and the youtube crowd is stupidity in a handbag.
DARPA was trying to be cool and the end product is just BULLSHIT on wheels.
it has no military application and is more akin to the WARTHOG in a Halo game than it is to a real warfighting vehicle.
well i think the idea is to bring around all possible ideas into one project development. i think the military has to be open to all possible design ideas and this is one interesting way of doing it. also the website says they did it under time and on budget, if there can be lessons learned from that, go for it. also DARPA has done alot of competitions in the past where the winner gets some money and DARPA gets the rights to it, free market at its best.
ReplyDeleteanother interesting competition from a while back:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2007/11/darpa-names-win/
If you count "software engineering" as engineering, then there are numerous examples of open source successes that are as well engineered and executed as big corporate products. These open source projects have to produce vs. specifications just like any other project.
ReplyDeleteSoftware development is as complex as vehicle development, though it is fundamentally different in many ways. As I said in my first post, I'm skeptical too about putting this into practice with physical products but high risk with potentially high payoff is what DARPA does.
Also I'm not disagreeing with you about the vehicle itself nor, I suspect, would DARPA. It makes sense to try out a new process with something simple and cheap even if you just test it and then throw it away.
It's like if Boeing came up with a new, unproven design process and tried it out by designing a reduced scale, remote control plane instead of a real one. It let's them start small and build the thing without taking a lot of time and money even though the end product is worthless by itself.
"Crowd sourcing" strikes me as more of something you would *not* want to do. It's like design-by-committe taken to the nth degree.
ReplyDelete