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The Great Robot Race: The DARPA Grand Challenge
2006 · Film · documentary · 56 min
Directed by Joseph Seamans
Twenty-three bizarre looking vehicles line up at the starting gate of the DARPA Grand Challenge with one thing in common: there's nobody behind the wheel. Sponsored by the Pentagon's research agency, this race for robotic, driverless vehicles has a $2 million prize. Its ultimate goal is to gather new ideas for the future of unmanned warfare.
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Nova did an excellent (and surprisingly technical) episode [1] on the 2005 race mentioned in this piece, including Thrun's Stanford team. It was especially impressive as a triumph of Thurn's software-based approach over several of the other veteran teams that relied heavily on complex hardware (e.g., those teams used camera gimbals while Thrun's team just compensated for camera bumps using code).
For those of you on Netflix, it's available as a streaming video [2], and I highly recommend it.
[1] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/darpa/ [2] http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/The-Great-Robot-Race-Nova/70050544