Off-road robot race recruits VIA 2:22PM

VIA has announced its favourite for the DARPA Grand Challenge 2005 off-road robot race. It is sponsoring The Prodigies' eXpeditor contender, built by 15-year-old Nicholas Hoza and 20-year-old Christopher Medrzycki as their bid for the $2mn prize.

'The DARPA Grand Challenge is the most exiting, fun and challenging project I've ever participated in - knowing that I'm building something completely unique makes every small achievement exhilarating,' said Hoza, the team captain, 'As my team's ... autonomous ground vehicle gets closer to perfection, I'm more and more confident that it will provide tough competition on race day.'

eXpeditor is built round a VIA EPIA Mini-ITX mainboard.

Although the prize next year is double 2004's inaugural event, the challenge is indeed great: none of the hopefuls in the March 2004 contest finished the course at all.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defense set up the Grand Challenge to accelerate research and development into autonomous ground vehicle technology that could be used on the battlefield.

Matt Whipp