Baja driving made easy?
I can see the day when your grandkids can let the H 329 Hummer take over the boring parts and drive right thru the night straight to Cabo San Lucas
for a virtual fishing trip. 
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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/10/09/...
NEVADA DESERT
Computers, start your engines
Stanford team apparent winners in robot car race
Primm, Nev. -- Stanford engineers steered the world toward a new era of driverless vehicles Saturday when their robotic Volkswagen SUV was the first
to cross the finish line after a 132-mile race across the Nevada desert.
The Stanford car, nicknamed Stanley, unofficially edged out two robotic Hummers from Carnegie Mellon University. The three vehicles were competitors
in a race sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. DARPA, which backed the early research behind the Internet, drummed up interest
in the race by offering $2 million to the first team to complete the course in less than 10 hours.
About 3,000 spectators cheered as the three robocars -- which all had unofficial times under the 10-hour deadline -- completed the circular course of
dirt roads, dark tunnels and hairpin curves designed to befuddle their sensors and baffle their computerized controls.
"The dream of cars driving themselves is becoming a reality,'' said Sebastian Thrun, the computer science professor who led the Stanford team.
"Before, the question was whether it was possible. Now we know it is."
But DARPA Director Anthony Tether refused to declare Stanford the official winner Saturday, in part because two robotic vehicles -- one entered by a
team from Louisiana and the other backed by engineers from Oshkosh, Wis. -- were still in the field late Saturday afternoon after starting late in the
staggered release of the 23 teams.
By early evening, one of those two robots, Gray Team, crossed the finish line, and because this was a race against the clock, it is technically
possible that it could be in contention for the fastest finish time. Tether said the other robot, Team TerraMax, would be paused overnight and allowed
to resume the competition Sunday morning.
Despite the fuzzy finish, Tether said Saturday's event would be to robotic cars what the first Wright brothers flight was to aviation. DARPA sponsored
the race, and a similar but less successful event last year, to spur research on driverless military transport vehicles.
"You really have seen history made,'' Tether said. "It's the start."
Without waiting for the official word, jubilant supporters lifted Thrun and his chief collaborator, Stanford software researcher Michael Montemerlo,
to their shoulders Saturday afternoon, as driverless Stanley sat beneath the finish line in this gambling resort just across the California border,
not far from Las Vegas.
The finish was bittersweet for William "Red" Whittaker, leader of the Carnegie Mellon team, whose two robotic entries apparently finished in the place
and show positions.
"It's a pretty magnificent moment for the whole robotics community," Whittaker said. "Three great robots have finished the race."
The other 18 robocars, built by teams of academics and hobbyists from coast to coast, either crashed, stalled or lost their electronic senses along
the rough way.
Saturday's results were a triumphant rebound from the underwhelming results of the similar event that DARPA staged in 2004.
The best showing last year was turned in by a Carnegie Mellon robo-Hummer nicknamed Sandstorm, which went just 7.4 miles in that 142-mile course
before it strayed off the road and spun its wheels until the rubber burned.
Yet even that ignoble finish fired the imaginations of inventors and hobbyists, who responded in even greater numbers to DARPA's 2005 challenge. In
contrast to the 15 teams that raced robots last year, 195 teams applied for starting positions in this year's race. Carnegie Mellon re-entered
Sandstorm and a second Hummer, called Highlander. DARPA let 43 teams compete in elimination trials that preceded the race and thinned the field down
to the 23 driverless vehicles that began Saturday's race.
Saturday ended in frustration for Morgan Hill businessmen David and Bruce Hall. The brothers' entry, Team DAD, was among last year's best finishers.
But this year the 275-pound laser range-finding sensor mounted on Team DAD's roof broke loose about 26 miles into the brutal course, blinding the
vehicle and bringing it to a halt.
"It (the sensor) did what it was supposed to do but it just couldn't survive the rough road,'' said a disappointed Bruce Hall.
All the teams had high hopes when the race began at 6:40 a.m. as the rising sun turned the sky from black to gray to blue. Spectators first sat
bundled against the morning chill, but unwrapped as the long procession of robotic cars, launched at intervals until shortly after 10 a.m., paraded
past the viewing stands.
Most spectators were friends or relatives of team members who have bruised knuckles and scratched heads for months in preparation for the race.
But the event also drew robotics enthusiasts from around the world, including Lt. Col. Carlo Simon, chief of maintenance for the army of Luxembourg,
who timed his vacation to watch the race.
"It's going to change everything," Simon said. "The military applications are just one side of it, but the civilian side will be much larger.''
In the flush of Saturday's finish, Stanford's Thrun predicted that driverless technology would evolve slowly into practical use, appearing first as
tools to help drivers avoid accidents and slowly gaining more control over the wheel as social customs and laws gain respect for artificial
intelligence systems.
DARPA's Tether brushed aside a reporter's question about whether the robotic vehicles tested Saturday might be the first step toward the creation of
military killer robots such as those popularized in the Terminator movies.
"We took that first step back in the 1880s, when the first (mechanical) computers were put together," Tether said.
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