A total of 15 students came together to build the “Red Rover.” It is a vehicle that is part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Urban Challenge in California. The Red Rover will compete with those made by the top schools across the nation. All entrants have the chance to bag $2 million.

All this, is part of the contest that Department of Defense agency, also known as DARPA, sponsors. The contest seeks to find ways on which to develop a vehicle that can run on its own. This is to prevent having the need to send soldiers out to drive the vehicle especially when charting dangerous grounds. In order to protect the lives of soldiers, DARPA sought to come up with this contest in order to help them out think of possibilities on how to effectively deliver their plan.

The Red Rover is one of the vehicles that made it to the contest’s semi-finals. It was tested last October 5 with Gov. Jon Huntsman sitting at the backseat as the car is running by itself at the parking lot of the Merrill Engineering Building. It was pre-programmed as to what course to take. Andy Hetrick, a student of Mechanical Engineering took the driver’s seat but he did not give any command to the vehicle. According to him, sitting at the driver’s seat as the computer takes full-control of the vehicle feels something akin to “voodoo magic.”

Source: Daily Utah Chronicle