Start your engines

The race is on! Today, 43 teams brought their autonomous vehicles to the California Speedway to participate in the first qualifying round of DARPA Grand Challenge. Today's test? A 2-mile course, complete with obstacles, including a 100-foot long tunnel so that GPS will be temporarily useless. The vehicle must of course negotiate all of this without a driver (well, a human driver - computers, sensors, and nav devices are perfectly legal).

Half of today's winners will advance to the "Grand Challenge" on October 8th - a 175-mile long desert route that may take 10 hours to complete. Last year's Grand Challenge (the first) had a gruelling route from Barstow, California to Primm, Nevada. No vehicle finished, and the $1 million pot went unclaimed. This year, the route is through the desert Southwest, with the pot a $2 million.

One of my favorites? Blue Team's autonomous motorcycle. Go Berkeley!