I, Chevy Tahoe

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A race into the future took place last weekend (Nov. 3). It was the DARPA Challenge, an event in which driver-less cars made their computer-, laser-, radar- and robot-guided way from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.

This meant negotiating intersections and traffic jams, obeying the rules of the road and staying out of the way of the other autonomous automobiles. There was even a parking exercise, but Lexus seems to have that down already.

In reality, the cars set off from Victorville, so they had an 80-mile head start. The field of 11 competitors included teams from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford and Cornell. The winning entry, achieving an average speed of 14 mph over 55 miles and with a 20-minute advantage over its closest rival, was the Carnegie Mellon/Tartan Racing Boss, based on a Chevrolet Tahoe. The first prize? Try $2 million.

This event was instigated by DARPA (the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) to stimulate new technologies. The hope is that these will eventually trickle down into active safety systems for mainstream cars, once the military has had its way, and allow vehicles in dangerous environments (such as mining) to be unmanned. It’s nice to know that someday all cars will be driven intelligently -- one way or another.

-- Colin Ryan