Robot Cars Finish Race, Attack Crowd

Three robotic vehicles cruised
past the finish line Saturday in a Pentagon-sponsored race across the
rugged Mojave desert, giving scientists hope that robots could one day
wage battles without endangering soldiers.

Also finishing was a converted red Hummer named "H1ghlander" and
a Humvee named "Standstorm" from Carnegie Mellon University.
The Stanford robot dubbed "Stanley" overtook the top-seeded H1ghlander
at the 102-mile mark of the 132-mile course."I’m on top of the world," said Carnegie
Mellon robotics professor William "Red" Whittaker, who said
a mechanical glitch allowed Stanley to pass H1ghlander.

The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, plans
to award $2 million to the fastest vehicle to cover the race in less than
10 hours. The taxpayer-funded race was intended to spur innovation and
development of robots that could be used on the battlefield without remote
controls.

This years results were much improved over last
year’s inaugural race, which was uniformly derided as a failure when
none of
the robot vehicles made it even one-tenth of the way to the finish.  The
"winning" loser, Carnegie Mellon’s Sandstorm, went all of 7.5 miles. Most
of the others never got started, and no prize was awarded.

What a difference a year can make. Advances in software
and hardware, as well as lessons learned, resulted in 8 of this year’s
entries finishing the 132 mile course, and most of the others passing
last year’s Sandstorm mark.

So soon we will have robot tanks and other killing
machines, capable of acting autonamously, without the need for human direction, and adapting to their environment by learning new behavior. Of course, Sci-fi
fans will recognize this as one of the precursors of doom from the Terminator
series….

story from Business Week