DARPA is sponsoring a new robot competition with a one million dollar prize called the DARPA Grand Challenge. The contest, to take place in 2004, will be a race between autonomous robots to get from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Robots will have to navigate both on-road and off-road. All robots must be fully autonomous ground based designs. Humans assistance even for refueling or repair is not allowed. The new competition was first mentioned in a UPI story covering the DARPATECH 2002 conference. Should be interesting.