DIESEL engine idling, Alice peers left, right, then straight at me. With her headlights on in the hazy morning, the imposing grey Ford van emits a loud beep, warning the world she is about to set off with no one at the wheel.
We’re at the starting line of this year’s DARPA Urban Challenge (UC), a 6-hour, 100-kilometre race along the roads of a simulated city organised by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Alice’s laser eye swings cautiously around. A robot can’t be nervous, but its human creators, a team of researchers from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, certainly are. They hope to prove that cars like…
