What's next for ground robots?

• Author: Jean, Grace
• Position: INSIDE Science AND Technology

When the Pentagon's premiere research lab held a robot race across the California desert three years ago, it not only generated excitement in industry and academia, but also created skeptics who scoffed at the idea of driverless cars and trucks traveling 142 miles on their own. Indeed, critics had plenty of ammunition after none of the teams crossed the finish line. The best entry only completed seven miles of the course.

After a more successful desert race in 2005, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency raised the stakes this year on its competition by challenging teams with a 60-mile urban course at the former George Air Force Base in Victorville, Calif. Loaded with sensor suites and on-board computing systems, vehicles ranging from cars and sports utility vehicles to military trucks navigated the streets and executed tasks that simulated battlefield supply missions.

Like beginning student drivers, the unmanned vehicles balked at intersections before merging into moving traffic, which was composed of 50 human-driven cars and other teams' entries. They swerved into the paths of oncoming vehicles, hopped curbs, and in a few cases, swiped other competitors and collided into barriers and buildings.

But six of the 11 finalists successfully finished the race, emerging mostly unscathed and providing the Defense Department with some viable technologies that it may want to consider for taking troops out of harm's way. Carnegie Mellon University's Tartan Racing team won the $2 million first prize with "Boss," an automated Chevy Tahoe that completed the course in 250 minutes and 20 seconds.

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With military forces suffering major casualties from roadside bombs in Iraq, Congress' mandate that the Defense Department turn one-third of its manned combat vehicles into autonomous systems by 2015 has become more urgent. DARPA's hope is to further accelerate the development of autonomous ground vehicle technologies to help the Pentagon meet that objective.

"These are very lofty goals," said John Beck, chief engineer for unmanned systems at Oshkosh Truck Corp., and leader of the company's team entry, TerraMax.

Driving across the desert requires certain technical advances in obstacle detection capabilities and computing; driving through a city-like landscape demands even greater technological finesse to mimic human judgment and reactions. DARPA's Urban Challenge is pushing those technologies to the edge, he said.

The team in...