Los Angeles, California - It's DARPA time again! A bunch of wacky and not-so-wacky robot cars will face off near here on Saturday watched by Pentagon people keen to see if machines alone can patrol urban war zones.
The Iraq war has especially highlighted the problem of keeping soldiers out of harm's way.
DARPA - Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency - is the Pentagon's research arm and each year the colonels get a free weekend in the desert to watch high-tech dune buggies crash - and sometimes burn.
- In 2004 the agency tested 15 driverless cars on a 220km desert track but none completed the course.
- In 2005 (very) modified 4x4 VW Touareg entered by Stanford University took prize as one of only four finalists to complete a 210km course over similar terrain.
- The 2007 competition will be the most demanding yet. Vehicles will be required to navigate a complex 96km course populated by about 50 human-driven vehicles.
DARPA director Tony Tether warned: "Vehicles competing in the Urban Challenge will have to think like human drivers and make split-second decisions to avoid other vehicles.
"The urban setting - the environment where many of today's military missions are conducted - will add considerable complexity to the challenge."
Among the finalists will be teams from some of America's top universities, including Stanford, Cornell and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The winning team will snare $2-million, the runner-up one million and the third $500 000.
Stanford's entrant is "Junior", a converted 2006 VW Passat whose steering, throttle and brakes have been modified to be computer-controlled. An array of lasers on the bumpers, radar and global positioning will feed data into the car's computer to determine its location.
Sebastian Thrun, associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering at Stanford, said improved artificial intelligence would lead to driverless cars on the roads by 2030.
Heading for suburbia
"Today we can drive about 160km before human assistance is necessary, by 2010 I expect this to rise to more than 1000km and by 2020 to more than a million."
Thrun also believed robotic vehicles would be deployed in war zones before they reached everyday suburbia.
"I think they'll be on the battlefield by 2015," he said. "It's going to make sense to use them in convoys or whenthere is danger to personnel." - AFP