Thursday, August 9, 2007

Southern California Teams Advance In DARPA Robot Race

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced this morning that it has named semifinalists for the upcoming DARPA Urban Challenge, the autonomous robot race scheduled for November. The race pits fully automated vehicles against a racecourse set in an urban setting. The Urban Challenge is a follow up to DARPA's Grand Challenge, which resulted in the first fully autonomous, robot car to make its way across a desert racecourse without human guidance. Among the Southern California teams who are semifinalists for the event are Westlake Village-based Axion Racing, Santa Monica-based Golem Group; Thousand Oaks-based SciAutonics/Auburn Engineering; and Team Caltech from Pasadena. The semifinalists will compete in a qualification event in Victorville in October.