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The Autonomous-Car Chaos of the 2004 Darpa Grand Challenge

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Alex Davies

Backchannel
01.06.2021 07:00 AM

The Autonomous-Car Chaos of the 2004 Darpa Grand Challenge

The self-driving vehicles smashed, burned, flipped, and tipped. But
the ambitious race through the Mojave launched an industry.

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Image may contain Human Person Vehicle Transportation Truck Offroad
Tire Wheel and MachineMilitary personnel watch as the SciAutononics
II autonomous vehicle leaves the starting line in a quest for a
million-dollar prize at the DARPA Challenge on March 13, 2004. It
went about seven miles before getting stuck on an embankment.
Photograph: David McNew/Getty Images

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This story is adapted from Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous
Car by Alex Davies.

When the inquisition required him to drop his study of what the Roman
Catholic Church insisted was not a heliocentric solar system, Galileo
Galilei turned his energy to the less controversial question of how
to stick a telescope onto a helmet. The king of Spain had offered a
hefty reward to anyone who could solve the stubborn mystery of how to
determine a ship's longitude while at sea: 6,000 ducats up front and
another 2,000 per year for life. Galileo thought his headgear, with
the telescope fixed over one eye and making its wearer look like a
misaligned unicorn, would net him the reward.

[alex_davie]
Alex Davies is a senior editor at Insider and the former editor of
WIRED's transportation section, where he specialized in
covering autonomous and electric vehicles. He is also the author of 
Driven, a book chronicling the origin of and race to create the
self-driving car.
Senior Associate Editor

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TopicsBook ExcerptlongreadsSelf-Driving CarsAutonomous Vehicles
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