Mad Max Cars That Drive Themselves!

[IBBoard]

There was an article in the Metro today about a DARPA project to get teams competing to race Robot-driven cars across the Mojave Desert. One of the pictures looks kinda like a Mad Max car!
Its cool, but kinda worrying - the American army want 1/3 of their vehicles to be robot controlled by 2010, and this race is a precursor to test out the technology. The idea seems fun - huge swarms of robot vehicles working together and sweeping across the desert, but the reality when combined with American accuracy figures doesn't bode well!

The DARPA Grand Challenge website.
The Mad Max-esque car.

[IBBoard]

Oh well, so much for that. Of all of the vehicles, none of them made it more than about 7 miles! The US Military automated force it looking promising, then(!)
Assuming the cool Mad Max-esque car was a converted HumVee, it apparently didn't make it more than a mile!

[TGSC]

not suprising considering they weigh like 3 times the weight of a normal car

theyve had cruise missiles for 10 15 years or so, wouldnt though cars would have been a problem

[IBBoard]

Whats weight got to do with it? and cruise missiles? The cars are probably meant as recon, much like the drones are only less visible. It does seem suprising that of all those cars and all that effort, none of them got very far - you would have thought they'd have been designed better :\

[TGSC]

I meant with the humvee it'd be a bit difficult to control on the desert when it weighed as much as a small armoured vehicle

The cruise missile point was that they have no problem steering a missile or even unmaned planes at hundreds of miles an hour but they struggle with a family car, I would have thought it might have been easier to drive a car by remote

[IBBoard]

Granted its not quite the same, but do you not remember the fun on Scrapheap Challenge with the ful-size RC cars?
And come on - the Americans not having problems steering cruise missiles? be serious