DARPA Grand Challenge
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I haven't watched any news since Thursday, so I completely missed the DARPA Grand Challenge. (sigh) As of this posting, 4 vehicles have run the entire course and TerraMax is still on the move. TerraMax was one of my favorites from last year.
Another favorite of mine is the team from Palos Verdes High School. Because I don't think colleges and businesses should have all the fun. Unfortunately, their vehicle -the Doom Buggy- hit a parked car on Friday during a trial run, and didn't make it to the Grand Challenge. It's a shame, too. I wanted to see the highschoolers win.
The Spirit Of Christianity made it to the national qualifying event, but didn't go on to the Challenge itself. At first, I wondered what possessed a bunch of Christians to create a machine of war. I mean, the whole purpose of the DARPA Grand Challenge is to forward the technology on unmanned vehicles. It's sponsored by the Department of Defense. It's so that we can go wage war without risking the lives of American soldiers. Yet, war includes death. I thought Christians are pro-life...
Anyway, when I got to their website, I simply enjoyed all their lovely pictures. I guess geeks come in all religions. Shame on me for my bias. :(

About the winners:
GrayBot began it's life as a Ford Escape hybrid SUV and finished the course in 10 hours, 18 minutes.

H1ghlander left the factory in 1999 as a diesel powered Hummer. It ran the course in 10 hours and 4 minutes.

Sandstorm completed the course in just under 10 hours, coming very close to winning the two million dollar prize. Which just goes to show that a HMMWV from 1986 can still get the job done. Now if they could make one that runs on something other than gasoline...

And the winner is... Stanley! This diesel powered VW Touareg ran the entire 132 miles in 9 hours and 56 minutes. Kudos to Stanford's School of Engineering for their hard work and successful run!