This competition seems "thrown together" from the very beginning. Personally, If I were involved, I would either organize a boycott, or a class action suit.

I'm not involved with the DARPA grand challenge, but if I was I'd be pretty pissed off by that. If I thought I was being treated in an unfair or arbitrary manner I'd just take my technology to another country and market it there instead. I'm sure they must be just as interested in autonomous navigation for military vehicles in europe/china/russia/australia.

you better watch out or john ashcroft is gonna getcha!

My early gut feelings weren't good for this Darpa event, but we could start holding our own mini-Darpa like outdoor robot contests. Something that covers an area less than a football field in size would work nicely. Simply the judges would take three or four GPS readings as marker checkpoints for the course to run, and the robots would start at the default start point (the imaginary 5th reading). Then travel though to each GPS location and return to the start. There can be hills, curbs, starirs, sidewalks, maybe even water traps, to traverse to acomplish the goals.This would accomplish everything that DARPA is looking for without hundreds of miles to travel. Besides people could watch this one much more easily. Plus we could afford to build one of these robots without taking out a third mortgage or getting sponsors.