Self driving robotic car

Some people's driving often makes me think that a PS2 would probably make worthy replacement to their navigational and road safety skills but it would take an enormous amount of convincing to make me relinquish control of a fast-moving ton of steel over to a machine. However, that is exactly what Red Team Robot Racing of Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh is striving towards, although admittedly, despite being a Humvee and approximately four times the size of an ordinary car this side of the pond, there doesn't appear to be much room left for a human anyway.

The amount of essential machinery isn't the only reason for this choice of vehicle; despite successfully navigating 200 miles of the test track without any human interference, this is just a prelude to a much tougher challenge yet to come. The Grand Challenge is a US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency organised competition to build a self-driving off-road vehicle capable of navigating across the Mojave Deser in  an allotted time. No one managed to make it to the finish line last year but the lure of $2m of prize money will doubtless see some even better efforts from the 20 finalists this year. Something tells me we may not be able to get pics from the final event though...

via BBC News