Dawning of driverless vehicle era?
Last October's DARPA Grand Challenge pitted robotic vehicles against each other in a 100-plus mile race across the desert. Five of twenty teams cheered their driverless vehicles across the finish line, an amazing feat given that just a year earlier no robot got past the seventh mile. The Grand Challenge, sponsored by the Pentagon, provided a glimpse of the future of military and perhaps personal transportation.
The race is chronicled in a new hour-long documentary, The Great Robot Race, which airs on the PBS program NOVA next Tuesday.