The AI Motorvators took shape in January 2003. " I was looking at the DARPA website for small business programs when I came upon the challenge. I knew right away that we could build a vehicle to enter the race" say's team leader Chris Pedersen, "I started calling people, trying to get them involved. The hardest task was lifting the confusion of how to approach the complicated sets of problems involved. The learning curve is very steep.

The AI Motorvator's approach is somewhere between a neural net and a brick on the accelerator. We realize there is probably so much we don't know so we try to keep everything as brutally simple as possible. We are trying to avoid dependence on overly sophisticated systems which may be more prone to failure and less able to adapt to an unexpected set of conditions. Our strategy is more "stupid" systems complimenting one another at a lower level, reserving the intelligence to where it's needed. Imagine a funnel with vehicle sensing at the wide end, and the intelligence at the narrow part. We want a large amount of information to flow in effortlessly at one end, combined with a small efficient use of intelligent decision making at the other. We like to say we are " building a smarter brick on the accelerator pedal." It's easy to over think the situation and end up totally overwhelmed by the size of the problem set. We're not trying to reinvent the brain, just trying to make our vehicle smarter.

We have lots of great ideas we want to try out. We started our company AutoIntelligent Systems Inc. as a collection point for technologies we develop. We are currently looking for additional capital to keep the exploration going, and are very committed to learning and growing with the technology. We have come a long way in the last year and have put a considerable amount of original and creative thought into our solutions. We will continue to develop vehicle technology and build fun and outrageous vehicles long after the race. We are racers and hot-rodders as well as programmers, and we love the idea of reinventing the automobile as a thinking machine. When you take away the need for a human driver, and the things that go along with that, like driver comfort, and driver feel you open up all sorts of possibilities. It's exciting.

We look forward to the competition and contributing to the technology in some way. Everybody loves a race with a big cash prize; it's like the first running of the Daytona 500. We're definitely in to win, but we really love the thrill of the chase and the opportunity to test out our ideas.