Of Bits and Bytes

I thought this story was Most Excellent. The article starts with

"Wanted by the Pentagon : A muscular, outdoorsy specimen. Must be intelligent and, above all, self-driven. When 20 hulking robotic vehicles face off next month in a rugged race across the Nevada desert, the winning machine (if any crosses the finish line) will blend the latest technological bling and the most smarts."

That exclusion is important - last year no one made it across.

"The sponsor of the Grand Challenge is the research arm of the Pentagon known as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, whose best-known success story is the Internet. The Pentagon wants one-third of the military's ground
vehicles to be unmanned by 2015. DARPA Director Anthony Tether hopes that a robot will be able to traverse the course in under 10 hours and snatch this year's prize."

Said prize, by the way, is USD $2 million.

I love stories like this - it's exactly the kind of race that I'd love to watch. I'm such a technoidiot myself, though, that I will never be able to compete in things like this. So I live vicariously. Did anyone catch RobotWars? It was shown over .... I think it was the Discovery channel. OhBoyOhBoyOhBoyOhBoyOhBoy. Gleeful mayhem! Death and destruction! Distraught losers and manical winners!


Great stuff.