A Carnegie Mellon University robotic vehicle called Sandstorm successfully completed four demonstration runs Tuesday at the Nevada Automotive Test Center for officials from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Sandstorm is one of two vehicles that Carnegie Mellon's Red Team has entered in this fall's DARPA Grand Challenge, a 175-mile, $2 million race in the desert Southwest. DARPA officials are making site visits to evaluate all 118 vehicles now entered in the race, as they get ready to pare the list to 40 vehicles that will be invited to a qualification event.

Last week, the Red Team's other entry, a converted H1 Hummer called H1ghlander, breezed through a DARPA site visit at the former LTV site in Hazelwood.