According to CNET News.com, the US DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Project Agency) is sponsoring a race for unmanned, autonomous vehicles to navigate from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. The 250-mile course, which won't be revealed until 2 hours before the race begins next March, must be completed in under 10 hours.
Vehicles cannot be remotely controlled except for stopping and starting in case of emergency. The photo to the right shows one potential contestant: Sandstorm from a team at Carnegie Mellon University. The diversity of designs sounds appealing, as the contestants have relatively few design constraints put on them. Some of the technologies to be possibly used by the vehicles include GPS (obviously), radar, sonar, and robotic vision systems.
Interestingly, VIA Technologies, a Taiwanese firm, is donating some of its Mini-ITX motherboards to the contestants. I blogged about these miniscule mainboards here and here. While it's doubtful that the resulting military equipment would rely on off-the-shelf gear like these boards, it definitely seems smart for PC components makers to try to get in on the ground floor of initiatives like this.
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