Racing on the Edge - Episode 87

Racing on the Edge - Episode 87

From Voices from DARPA by DARPA

May 22, 2025 · 21 min

About this episode

This episode discusses the RACER program's advancements in autonomous off-road vehicle technology for military applications.

RACER enables off-road vehicles to travel autonomously and reliably at high speeds over cross-country terrain, enabling new capabilities for our warfighters. Since the DARPA Grand Challenge kicked off more than 20 years ago, the Department of Defense has been very publicly invested in creating the capabilities necessary for ground vehicles to travel autonomously in areas without roads, signs, maps, or even GPS signals. In this episode, we speak with Dr. Stuart Young , who leads the Robotic Autonomy in Complex Environments with Resiliency (RACER) program, which is creating platform agnostic autonomy capable of operating in complex, mission-relevant, off-road environments that are significantly more unpredictable than on-road conditions. We also speak with Dr. Trent Mills, a Colonel in the U.S. Army and special assistant to the DARPA director. Mills shares a warfighter perspective on what the Army has learned from RACER, and how autonomy is being integrated into the way the Army prepares and thinks about future engagements. Check out videos from earlier experiments to better envision what testing looks like in the field: RACER Experiment 4 – Heavy Platform Highlight Video RACER…

People in this episode

Guests: Dr. Stuart Young, Dr. Trent Mills

Topics covered

  • autonomous vehicles
  • military technology
  • off-road navigation
  • robotics
  • warfighter capabilities

Keywords

  • RACER
  • autonomy
  • off-road vehicles
  • military
  • DARPA
  • robotics
  • experimentation

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: DARPA, U.S. Army, Robotic Autonomy in Complex Environments with Resiliency (RACER)

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