This may appeal to the military minded but it is also of interest to the rest of us who drive.
The DARPA Challenge was a "race' over 131.6 miles of terrain that included significant elevation chages, dry lake beds, tunnels, narrow desert roads, and near the end a tight gap through the Lucy Mountains called Beer Bottle Pass in the Mojave Desert.
At stake was 2 million dollar contract, winner-take-all, from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ( Of the US government).
These were a collection of 23 "Autonomous ground vehicles"--essentially vehicular robots--which included cars, trucks, vans, SUV's, ATV's, military vehicles ond others.
The winner was a diesel powered VW Touareg named "Stanley" from Stanford University.
The contestants were given the route less than 2 hours before the race. In 2004 no contestants made it 8 miles. This race, 5 contestants made it the 131.6 miles. The race was about who could proces the data the fastest and guide their driverless vehicles most accurately through 2935 GPD waypoints.
The reason is by 2015 the Pentagon wants 33% of US military vehicles to be driverless. ( with 25% of casualties coming from convoy duty in Afganistan and Iraq)
Here should be some links to some of the participants:
www.standfordracing.org Came first
www.redteamracing.org Came second and third with their two vehicles
www.terramax.com Came fifth
I found the entire article interesting. I have only highlighted bits and pieces. It's not available online yet.
