Ron Sobchik

DARPA (Defense Advance Research Projects Agency) is a part of the U.S. government tasked with bringing new and revolutionary weapons to the war-fighter. One of its goals is to develop a vehicle that is capable of traversing areas with existing unpaved roads and trails without requiring the guidance or intervention of a human driver or controller. Such so-called ?autonomous? vehicles would have to be capable crossing areas of terrain similar to the U.S. and Iraqi deserts following only tracks of GPS-based coordinates to get from their starting point to the finish.

It all started with an article that was posted on the Northrop Grumman internal Web Site describing our sponsored entry in a Grand Challenge race across the desert, an unmanned vehicle named the Terra Hawk. I copied and forwarded the piece to Off-Road.Com because I knew their interest in all things off-road. I was asked if I would be interested in covering the event for ORC. Knowing a great opportunity when I see it, I jumped at the chance to see this technology in action.