Carnegie Mellon University's Red Team has landed both of its robotic racing machines among the 40 semifinalists for this fall's $2 million Grand Challenge race sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

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"It's just a tremendous field," said William "Red" Whittaker, the Carnegie Mellon roboticist who heads the Red Team. "The teams are more solid now than they were at last year's qualifying competition -- and we've still got four months to go."

DARPA's director, Anthony Tether, likewise said the high quality of the 118 entries that received site visits in the past month made it difficult to winnow the field.

Those 40 semifinalists will compete at a qualifying event this September at the California Speedway in Fontana for 20 spots in the Oct. 8 race. The event is slated to cover about 175 miles at an as-yet-undisclosed location somewhere in the desert Southwest.

The course for last year's inaugural Grand Challenge covered 142 miles from Barstow, Calif., to Primm, Nev. No vehicle completed the course within the 10 hours allowed. The Red Team's Sandstorm vehicle went the farthest, but got stuck after a little more than seven miles.

The driverless vehicles must complete the course without any human guidance or intervention.

Sandstorm, a heavily modified 1986 Humvee, is again in the competition, along with its new stablemate, H1ghlander, which is based on a 1999 H1 Hummer supplied by its manufacturer, AM General.

Also among the 40 semifinalists are many of last year's competitors, including Oshkosh Truck, Caltech and Virginia Tech. New this year is a second entry from Virginia Tech, as well as teams from Stanford and Cornell.

"I suspect we are driving faster than most of the field ... although we do have some bugs to fix before our fast driving takes us straight into a tank trap," said Richard Mason, leader of The Golem Group, an independent team from Santa Monica, Calif., that was one of the top performers last year. This year, Golem is teamed with UCLA.

Many of last year's teams barely made it out of the starting gate, but Whittaker said he expects a number of teams will finish the race and that speed will be a critical issue.

"You go too slow, you might as well not have run," he said.

But going too fast could eliminate a team just as easily, as Mason suggested.

Sandstorm has already spent much of the winter and spring testing in Nevada. Both Sandstorm and H1ghlander are now being tested in Pittsburgh, primarily at the former LTV site in Hazelwood. The emphasis now is on improving reliability, Whittaker said. He doesn't anticipate taking either machine to Nevada for desert testing until sometime after July 4.

DARPA, the Pentagon's research and development arm, is sponsoring the Grand Challenge to spur innovation in autonomous ground vehicles, which the military expects will assume key roles over the next decade.

The Red Team includes about 40 students, faculty and other volunteers. Its sponsors include Caterpillar, Intel, SAIC and Boeing.