All those sci-fi novels with the hero of the story taking a nap in the back of the car while driving across the country are starting to look like they could come true.

DARPA, the US military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency,  sponsored a rally in November of 2007 offering a $2 million prize to the company or individual who could navigate an urban setting the fastest with a driverless vehicle.  There were a lot of SUV’s in the race (you need a lot of room for all the sensors and hardware, apparently) and one monster truck.

The winning vehicle, coming in at a blistering average speed of 14 mph, was outfitted and programmed by a Carnegie Mellon Team.  It took more than a dozen lasers, radars and cameras to make the AI truck capable of following the rules of the road, parallel park and avoid obstacles, and over 500,000 lines of code to process the information.

Unbelievably, the race had only one collision:  a 10 mph bump between two vehicles.  I wonder how that compares to human-driver accident rates?

I know we’re all waiting for the day we can don our jet packs and wingsuits for the morning commute, but this AI car idea is a pretty good concept for diverting our attention until then.