December 21, 2003: Robotic Technology - Ron "Mad Max" Fink

Art Bell opens with a detailed examination of a high-resolution photograph sent by a listener showing what appears to be a disc-shaped craft sitting on the desert floor near Sedona, Arizona. The image, allegedly taken by a Grand Canyon tour pilot, shows a saucer with an apparent open door, possible heat tiles, and tire tracks leading to the site. Listeners call in with theories ranging from cattle feed storage containers to genuine extraterrestrial hardware.

Ron "Mad Max" Fink then joins to discuss his work building fully autonomous vehicles for the DARPA Grand Challenge. He explains how massively parallel computer systems with ultra-dense vision arrays can map terrain in real time, detect obstacles by type, and anticipate the behavior of humans, animals, and other objects. Fink describes building ethical decision-making into the lowest software layers so a vehicle could override an impaired driver or minimize accident damage.

Though his team was cut from the DARPA competition despite praise for their software architecture, Fink announces the formation of the International Robot Racing Federation. He outlines plans for a September race in Nevada that would be open to international teams and serve as a proving ground for autonomous vehicle technology that could eventually reduce highway fatalities by two-thirds.