As I mentioned just two posts ago, Off Wing reader Dave Smith (also a former defensive partner of mine), floats me all sorts of stuff that I wouldn't normally trip over myself.
Dave works as an artificial intelligence engineer at Mitre, and he's part of Mitre's team working on the Darpa Grand Challenge 2005, a competition where Darpa is challenging companies to build an autonomous vehicle that can travel unassisted for 175 miles:
The 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge will be held on October 8, 2005 in the desert Southwest. The team that develops an autonomous ground vehicle that finishes the designated route most quickly within 10 hours will receive $2 million. The route will be no more than 175 miles over desert terrain featuring natural and man-made obstacles. The exact route will not be revealed until two hours before the event begins.
You can see the video of Mitre's entry here.
Sure, it's cool, but why bother posting about this at all? Well, let's just say there's one entrant who are doing a little more than just letting the technology speak for itself:
The Axion Racing Twins understand and lovingly explain, with a bit of Irish Kentucky twang, the technology and tools needed by Spirit for autonomous vehicle driving in our 2005 DARPA Site Visit Video. Watch the first video in history to show people and/or twins driven autonomously in a vehicle.
Click here for the video.
