DARPA selects 23 teams for the 2005 Grand Challenge

Fontana (CA) - DARPA officials have announced the starting vehicles for the 2005 Grand Challenge. On Saturday October 8, 23 vehicles will begin the approximately 150 mile race that will start and stop in Primm, Nev. Anthony Tether, director of DARPA, expects 'spectacular" footage to appear during the race.

Tether told reporters that he is "proud of the improvement" all the vehicles made over past year. "Some amazing things were done this week. 18 months ago, we were happy that they were able to just leave the chute," said Tether. Already during the first day of this year's qualifications, the organizers of the race got a pretty good idea that things would be different when Team Mojavaton's Nissan Xterra finished the qualification run on its first try. "I could have run out there and kissed them, but there was no driver to kiss," he said.

While the hardware available to all the teams is virtually the same, the software development set the teams apart apart. The vehicles do not only have to detect obstacles, but software has to provide the data to steer the vehicles around objects and bring them back on track. "It's like when you first learned how to drive. Your eyes see the obstacle, but the signal still has to go from the eyes to the brain and then to the arms and legs," explained Tether.

Speaking of obstacles, the vehicles could face their ultimate nightmare as Tether hinted at a cliff somewhere along the route. "We could have some... spectacular footage," he said.

Humphrey Cheung was a senior editor at Tom's Hardware, covering a range of topics on computing and consumer electronics. You can find more of his work in many major publications, including CNN and FOX, to name a few.