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America's Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the research arm of the Department of Defence, is akin to a high-stakes venture capitalist, gambling large sums of money on risky technologies that will probably fail, but could pay off in a big way. It has had some stupendous successes, such as the internet, the Saturn rocket and micro-electro-mechanical systems. There have also been some resounding failures, such as the Total Information Awareness project, which was swiftly abandoned. But what is arguably DARPA's most outlandish scheme yet will begin March 13th, when robotic vehicles will line up in Barstow, California to make a run across 250 miles of scrub and desert. The vehicles will use digital cameras, radar and sonar, married with sophisticated home-grown software, to navigate. The Grand Challenge is asking researchers to solve the stubborn problem of building land vehicles that navigate and drive themselves. Even if the delicate digital hardware running these machines keeps going, navigating through the Mojave desert represents a complex challenge.

Reports on the contract won by Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California to create a miniature tactical mobile robot for urban operations. Features of the robot; Uses.

Mentions the research of Mark Yim of Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in California on a reconfigurable modular robot. Efforts to create a robot for use in search and rescue operations, deep-sea mining, and space exploration; Description of the PARC Polybot, which can change its outward form.