Tortoise rules affect robot event

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California
PRESS-ENTERPRISE
Tortoise rules affect robot event
As vehicles take to desert terrain for a military-linked competition,
environmentalists try to safeguard tortoises
By Jennifer Bowles
01:08 PM PST on Monday, March 8, 2004

The U.S. military forced out Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq and freed
Afghanistan from oppressive Taliban rule. But in the California desert,
the military had to concede to a lumbering reptile.

The Defense Department, in mounting a first-ever, $1 million
winner-takes-all competition of robotic vehicles this Saturday, had to
make several changes to protect the desert tortoise, a threatened
species.

"I think they were surprised that maybe it would be so difficult or that
anyone would care. It was a dose of reality, said Edythe Seehafer,
environmental coordinator for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which
issued the permit for the event.

First touted as a Los Angeles to Las Vegas race, the DARPA Grand
Challenge slowly shriveled to a "near Barstow to near Primm or Las
Vegas" event with qualifications at the California Speedway in Fontana,
which begin Monday. The word "race" was dropped and replaced by
"competition" or "military field test" because most races have been
banned in the areas of the San Bernardino County desert that serve as
tortoise habitat.

Although the first robot to complete the 225-mile course in 10 hours
wins, the only competitive segments will take place in few designated
off-road areas where environmental issues are minimal, according to
documents and interviews with the BLM and U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service.

The robots will be limited to a speed of 25 miles per hour through land
considered critical to the survival of the tortoise, and the event's
staff members must activate a robot's emergency-stop button if the
robots wander more than five feet beyond an existing road's edge.

"We have gone a long way to make sure we met all the environmental
issues," said Air Force Col. Jose Negron, who is leading the project for
the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, the research arm of the
Defense Department known as DARPA.

This article can be viewed at:
http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories/PE_News_Local_robots07.a0fd8.html

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