The semi-finals begins today at Fontana Speedway.

I like this picture from the OSU team:
http://oregonstate.edu/grandchallenge/drupal/files/stairs.jpg

And Alice Chang, AP writer, notes in
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050928/ap_on_sc/robot_race

quote
Participants ranging from souped-up SUVs to military behemoths will be
graded on how well they can self-drive on rough road, make sharp turns
and avoid obstacles - hay bales, trash cans, wrecked cars - while
relying on GPS navigation and sensors, radar, lasers and cameras that
feed information to computers.

The robots also have to heed speed limits in certain zones and pass
through a 100-foot-long tunnel designed to temporarily knock out their
GPS capabilities.

"It looks like a piece of cake," Sebastian Thrun, a computer science
professor at Stanford University, said of the qualifying course that
will challenge his team's entry, a converted Volkswagen Touareg dubbed
Stanley.
/end quote

/dps