DARPA Grand Challenge 2005
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) invented the internet. This year, the DARPA held the Grand Challenge: 5 autonomous ground vehicles successfully completed a touigh 131 mile course in Nevada's Mojave Desert. The Stanford University's vehicle called Stanley won the robotics challenge in 6 hours and 53 minutes. The next two vehicles - Sandstorm and H1ghlander were only 10-20 minutes behind.
Grand Challenge Course Map
The bad news: this was a military research project. Here is from the challenge's description:
The DARPA Grand Challenge is an unprecedented government effort to accelerate research and development in autonomous ground vehicles to help save American lives on the battlefield. DARPA will award $2 million to the autonomous (robotic) ground vehicle that can successfully navigate a challenging desert course of approximately 150 miles the fastest (in less than 10 hours). The vehicles must find and follow a prescribed course route, avoid obstacle,s, and negotiate turns, all while traveling at military-relevant rates of speed. The ground vehicles are fully autonomous - not remote-controlled.
What can you say? Not much, I guess. Let's hope something good (i.e. non-militarywise) will come from this research project.