Robot race suffers quick, ignoble end
Tom Abate, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, March 14, 2004
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Primm, Nev. -- A robot race across the Mojave Desert turned into a parade of frustration Saturday, as 15 driverless vehicles spun their wheels, flipped over and encountered rocks and ruts that befuddled sensors and baffled programming.

The Grand Challenge event was supposed to be a 10-hour sprint across the desert, with a $1 million prize to the designers of the first driverless vehicle to transit 142 miles of sand and rock from Barstow (San Bernardino County) to Primm, Nev., just across the state line.

But shortly after 11 a.m., Anthony Tether, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon office that put up the prize, took the stage at a casino near the supposed finish line to announce: "The Grand Challenge ended about 10 minutes ago when the last 'bot went out.''

Despite the race's somewhat comic end -- the robotic dirt bike entered by an Albany man toppled two feet from the starting gate -- Tether said the competition had advanced DARPA's aim of spurring the development of driverless combat vehicles capable of fighting desert wars without putting soldiers in harm's way.

"It exceeded our expectation by the amount of people who showed up, and by the types of people who showed up,'' said Tether, saying the agency would probably stage a new challenge in a year or so after the volunteers have time "to get their batteries recharged.''