From the Dept of Heroic Failures

OK this happened a week ago, but I’ve been on hols so I only read the results today.

You may or may not have heard about the DARPA Grand challenge. A “challenge of autonomous ground vehicles between Los Angeles and Las Vegas” — read robots*. A gruelling 200km journey, unaided, accross the dessert but with a whopping $1mil for the first team to complete it.

There was all sorts of controversy when DARPA changed the rules (as some believe) to favour the large companies who entered, and then more when they released the route the challenge would take.

15 teams got through the selection process, and on the 13th of this month they all gathered just outside LA and set their bots off.

Now given the vast prize fund, I didn’t think anyone would make the entire distance in this first comp.

How right I was. A shocking number didn’t even make it out of the start area. The bot that went the furthest managed a huge 7.4 miles, before grounding itself and bursting into flames.

Schadenfreude takes the egde off a dull day.

*that’s the proper definition of robot not remote control a-la “Robot Wars”