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US military is testing high-speed driverless vehicles on rough terrain

A programme to test robotic vehicles in the Mojave desert shows that they can autonomously navigate rocky landscapes to get to their destination, without roads or maps

By Jeremy Hsu

16 April 2023

An autonomous vehicle negotiating trails at high speed in the Mojave desert

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

A US military programme has begun testing autonomous all-terrain vehicles without any human drivers on board – showing how robotic vehicles can race across rough landscapes dotted with dangerous obstacles.

The off-road robots navigated steep hills and ditches while avoiding rocks and trees as they sped across the Mojave desert at the US Army’s National Training Center in Fort Irwin, California. It was the third experiment in a project overseen by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), but …

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