Cornell vehicle will try to drive 175 miles of rough terrain without human control for a prize of $2 million

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Sept05/DARPAchallenge.ws.html

Sept. 27, 2005

By Bill Steele
ws21@cornell.edu

ITHACA, N.Y. -- A challenge: Build a car that can drive itself.

The DARPA Challenge: Build a car that can drive itself across 175 miles of desert with unpaved roads, ditches, berms, sandy ground, standing water, rocks and boulders, narrow underpasses, construction equipment, concrete safety rails, power line towers, barbed wire fences, cattle guards and maybe even tank traps.

Impossible? Probably. But a team of Cornell engineering students is in California trying, as contestants in the 2005 DARPA Challenge. They suspect they won't succeed, but they don't think anyone else will either. In last year's competition, the most successful car only went 7.5 miles before breaking down.