On March 13th, unmanned robots have 10 hours to get from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. First robot there gets a million bucks from the U.S. Government. Official race site. The Raw Feed has provided several news links about it, including some entries surviving qualifying trials as well as a link to some entries.
DARPA is the same U.S. government defense agency that we can thank for the Internet, as well as Vietnam war-era mechanical elephants.