DARPA Urban Challenge – Highland Racing

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001, Public Law 106-398, Congress mandated in Section 220 that “It shall be a goal of the Armed Forces to achieve the fielding of unmanned, remotely controlled technology such that... by 2015, one-third of the operational ground combat vehicles are unmanned” [1]. In response to the congressional mandate, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) initiated the Grand Challenge competition. The goal of the competition was to promote and accelerate research and development of autonomous robotic ground vehicles that can navigate itself in offand on-road terrain. The motivation is to develop technologies that will keep military personnel off the battlefield and out of harm’s way.