Innovations from a Robot Rally; Your Future with Robots; Special Editions; by W. Wayt Gibbs; 9 Page(s)

"The most valuable and complex component in a modern vehicle typically is also the most unreliable part of the system. Driving accidents usually have both a human cause and a human victim. To certain engineersespecially those who build robotsthat is a problem with an obvious solution: replace the easily distracted, readily fatigued driver with an ever attentive, never tiring machine.

"The U.S. military, which has been losing soldiers to roadside bombs in Iraq for several years, is particularly keen on this idea. But by 2002 more than a decade of military-funded research on autonomous ground vehicles had produced only a few slow and clumsy prototypes.