DARPA—the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, an agency
of the United States Department of Defense—is one of the
entities which has done the most for the advancement of
technology in general and robotics in particular (at least as
far as publicly visible actions are concerned). It has a long
standing tradition of putting forth challenges to the community
regarding some areas where it thinks some stimulus is needed to
push our knowledge and capabilities further. One good example of
such challenges was the famous DARPA Grand Challenge, which
consisted of a long distance competition for fully autonomous
(driverless) cars, along desert roads. The first event was held
on 2004 and none of the competing robots managed to finish it.
Then, in the second event held in 2005, five vehicles (out of
twenty three) completed the course. Driverless cars are
something that we’ve been hearing a lot about these days, with
some of the existing prototypes having driven hundreds of
thousands of miles in real-world roads and