Eyes on $1-Million Prize for Robot Ground-Vehicle Race

There were off-road racers with cherry-red leather jackets, skilled in maneuvering two-seater trucks across harsh desert terrain. There were graduate students, tall and lanky, their pasty complexions evidence of hours spent holed away inside laboratories. And then there was the robot racing crowd: grown men skilled in the art of remote-control circuitry, and in equipping small vehicles with flamethrowers and chain saws.

But in the Petersen Automotive Museum on Saturday, surrounded by hot rods and ornate cars, they were chatting like long-lost friends. Only if they worked in teams could any of them ever meet the challenge they had just heard issued.

The federal Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency had promised $1 million -- tax free -- to the group that, in 13 months, could build and race an unmanned ground vehicle from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.

There were whispers that hovercraft might do the trick. Bouncing spheres with gyroscopes were also suggested, as were octopus-like vehicles with legs that sweep across the terrain, traversing potential hazards when necessary.

Some of the 400 conference attendees, including movie special-effects gurus and mini-celebrities who had won big on TV's war of the robots, were forthright about their plans. They showed off detailed color designs and discussed how to build navigation algorithms that might win them the prize. Others proved to be stone-faced competitors, remaining silent as radical ideas were floated in their presence.

"We have a list of 20 concepts we are trying to evaluate, to see if they're even realistic or possible," said 22-year-old Anthony Levandowski, a graduate student in industrial engineering at UC Berkeley. He had come to the daylong conference, sponsored by the defense agency, with a friend from college, Randy Miller, 21, who is now studying engineering at Stanford.

The two said they were at the conference to learn the rules of the competition and to form a team with other eager participants.

The Pentagon agency, which helped create the Internet, the stealth bomber and "smart bombs," is sponsoring the contest in part to meet a government mandate that at least one in three Army battle systems soon be unmanned. The organization plans to publish the technical schematics of all competitors' vehicles after the race in March 2004.