The Great Robot Race

The folks at NOVA, the PBS documentary series, sent me a screener of tonight's episode, The Great Robot Race. It's about the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, a 132 mile desert race between vehicles that drive themselves. This isn't the sort of thing we normally cover here at About Cars, but I thought it was a really well-done documentary about a fascinating subject and, as such, deserved mention here in our blog.

Will this technology go anywhere? I doubt self-driving cars will ever take over for the ones we drive ourselves, but I learned from the show that the military would like to have 1/3rd of its road vehicles robotized in 10 years. Imagine how many lives that could save in Iraq if we had that technology now. Back in 1969, DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) established ARPANET, a network which evolved into the Internet. As I watched The Great Robot Race, I couldn't help but think that in just a few years we'll look back on this footage the way we look back on early films of the Wright Brothers. This is truly history in the making.

The Great Robot Race will air tonight, Tuesday, March 28th, at 8pm in most markets on your local PBS station. You can also check out their web site here. Watch, learn and enjoy. -- Aaron Gold