Oct 10, 2005, 02:10 am
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| former overlord
Location: New York Posts: 2,383 | Robot race ends with more than one winner
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4322542.stm Quote:
A team from Stanford University's School of Engineering has made motoring history, winning a $2m (£1.14m) prize in the process.
Its car, a Volkswagen Touareg nicknamed "Stanley", has become the first self-navigating vehicle to successfully complete the gruelling 131.6 mile (211km) cross-country Darpa Grand Challenge, a race for autonomous robot vehicles held in Nevada's Mojave desert.
Sebastian Thrun, leader of the winning team, predicted that one day all cars would be able to drive themselves.
But the real prize could be fewer US casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The 2005 Grand Challenge - the world's only driver-less car race - was organised by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or Darpa, part of the US Department of Defense.
If we can take a logistics vehicle and drive it across an environment like that in Iraq and save lives that's worth a lot of technology investment.
Greg Young, ENSCO
The military's need for vehicles which can drive themselves is most pressing in Iraq, where US logistical and military convoys come under frequent attack by insurgents.
| They did it this time. Pretty cool that they got these things to navigate that far with no human interaction...
So it goes |
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