Fergie's Tech Blog

Iraq War raises stakes of next Darpa bot race

Stephen Ohr writes in EE Times:

In a demonstration no less powerful for its low-tech simplicity, Anthony Tether, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, underscored the real-world relevance of Darpa's Grand Challenge autonomous-vehicle competition in his briefing to applicants last fall. Tether first showed the contestants a slide of the desert route their driverless vehicles must take — approximately 110 miles from Barstow, Calif., to Primm, Nev. Then he overlaid a transparency showing an almost identical route from Baghdad to Fallujah.

As the carnage from insurgents' roadside bombs mounts in Iraq, Darpa's second Grand Challenge is seeing higher participation from commercial parts and equipment vendors. Whereas universities and talented amateurs dominated the first competition, held in March 2004, established contractors have entered the second contest in larger numbers, in hopes of securing not just the $2 million first prize but also a toehold in what promises to be a mammoth military market.

posted by Fergie @ 8/15/2005 07:43:00 AM