Now, cars that drive themselves...

Last sunday, I watched one of the most interesting races I have ever seen. The Great Robot Race | PBS was a race for self-driven cars (no driver, no remote operation either) across a 130 mile course of unpaved road in the Mohave desert in Nevada. Once the cars leave the starting line, there is no human interevention at all, they have to negotiate turns, bad roads, obstacles and find their way to the endpoint themselves. All this for a grand prize of $2 million from DARPA, the American advanced research & development agency, which is a part of their department of defence (DoD).

This was the second year for the race, last year no vehicle completed the race and only one got as far as 7-miles from the start. Compare that with 5 vehicles completing the course this year. You really have to watch the program to see how remarkable all this is. What was also interesting was the different approaches different teams took in order to solve the same problem.

So what are the potential applications for technology like this? Well, DARPA wanted to develop this technology to replace drivers in hostile areas like Iraq & Afghanistan, as army drivers there are specially vulnerable to attacks. But the potential is probably endless, at the very least you could replace bus-drivers for most long-distance traffic, replace cab-drivers and eventually all drivers.

You can watch the whole program online at PBS and read a lot more about driverless cars here.