Smart Robot Autos Tough It Out
Teams are gearing up to create a vehicle that can run an off-road,
250-mile course through rough terrain without any human help during the
race. What kind of buggy will claim the $1 million dollar prize put up
by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency? By Eliot Borin.

<font color="#f683ad"> Sounds way cool, wonder who will be in for the competition..the reletively small $$$ figure of the prize means most major corps will probably give it a miss but I'll bet many colleges field teams [img]smile.gif[/img] </font>

This has been in the works for a LONG time. About 11 years ago I worked on a project with some guys down at the NIST campus in Gaithersburg MD (adaptive thermal compensation of a vertical machining center... boring stuff), and accross the hall from us was a garage that had a very nice Hummer in it (this was a mil spec vehicle, the body was made out of AT LEAST 1.5" thick fiberglass... heavy duty stuff). The hummer was a robotic vehicle project (DARPA funded) that could drive itself around the campus, very cool technology and this was a decade ago.

<font color="#f683ad">NIST CAmpus [img]smile.gif[/img] thats not too far from where I live [img]smile.gif[/img]

Must have been a gas to work there [img]smile.gif[/img] </font>

Wow, science can be so cool :D
I just can't wait until the days where we don't have to drive. we just get in the car, tell it where we want to go, and relax. It'd give me an extra 15 minutes of sleep every morning :D