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What's the point in the Army developing its own, parallel autonomous vehicle technology? Why not just have DARPA funnel funds to Google or someone and piggyback off their research?

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Because the Google car works with pre-registered and mapped out terrain, and the enemy rarely will let you pause for a few months and run a bunch of ladars through their area of control? Because the google car is trying to solve the problem for roads and not figure out whether this stream is fordable? Because the google car's autonomy has never once had to worry about silhouetting on the top of a ridge line?

I'm 95% certain that each one of the vehicles there was produced by contractors for a government agency (and if these particular vehicles weren't, certainly such contracts do exist- I used to work on one). If Google wanted to compete for a contract it certainly could, but its experience isn't particularly helpful in attacking the problem set that the Army is interested in.

Well, Google already piggybacked off of DARPA ;-)

Also, combat zones != California suburbs.

> Also, combat zones != California suburbs.

We're just going to leave that one tee'd up, aren't we?

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