I know I'm about two weeks late to this party, but circumstances led me to Wikipedia's entry for the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge. I was quite impressed with the robot vehicles' improvements over last year's Challenge, where none of the competitors got to the 8-mile mark, but I noticed a couple of disturbing things:
- Golem2: Out of race at 22 miles; software bug crashed main computer causing 60mph rampage.
- NaviGATOR: Out of race at 14 miles; lost control pushing speed past known tolerances
- Alice: Out of race at 8 miles; after GPS reacquisition, veered over barrier and towards media.
And thus will begin the Age Of The Machines.
From what it sounds like here, we're already at the point where machines can imitate human behavior. The first two are perfect examples of "watch this!" and the last is clearly retaliation against the paparazzi.
Yes; clearly, that last one is the most highly evolved of the group.
I've done all of these things without automation of any type!