DARPA

A tiny mechanical entomopter using insect-like wing dynamics has achieved tethered flight following US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency funding of a "robotic fly" project at Harvard University's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

The Stanford Racing Team will get to defend its robotic vehicle title.

It was one of two teams with Bay Area connections named among 36 semifinalists Thursday for the defense department's robotic vehicle race later this year.

A team of Stanford University robotic researchers will test a driverless Volkswagen Passat wagon named Junior in this fall's Urban Challenge, an unmanned car race sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The Urban Challenge course in November will be a 60-mile test of city driving, interrupted by intersections, rights-of-way, stop signs, and lane changes.

Creative scientists have until next week to submit proposals for creating a shape-shifting military robot that can shrink and then reconfigure itself to normal height and shape.

Junior, the robot Volkswagen, passed its basic driver's test here Thursday.

Now comes the hard part: a race on mock city streets that will raise the bar for artificial intelligence in the 21st century.

This Car Drives Itself

The two guys nearly fell off their bikes staring at a Lotus Elise roadster as it rumbled past them on N.C. State University's Centennial Campus. Nobody was driving the curvy blue sports car. The cyclists struggled for words.

"Hey," one said. "Is that, uh, automatic?"

Want to build chemical robots that can morph to change shapes and squeeze into spaces that appear smaller than the bots? Then the guys who invented the first Internet want to talk to you.