Not one, but four cars won the DARPA challenge

A robotic Volkswagen called “Stanley”, developed by a team from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, won a $2 million prize on Sunday for winning a tough desert race of driverless vehicles.

And in a stunning improvement on 2004’s Grand Challenge, when no car completed more than 5% of the course, four other vehicles also finished. The 212-kilometre race across the Nevada desert is set by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

“These vehicles haven't just achieved world records, they have made history,” says DARPA director Tony Tether

No kidding. Independent planetary rovers, smart rescue vehicles, to say nothing of the military applications - all in all, w00t!!