Carnegie Mellon University's Red Team is hitting the road this morning, packing up its two robotic off-road racing vehicles and heading to Nevada for desert testing prior to October's $2 million Grand Challenge race.

The Red Team's two modified Hummers, called Sandstorm and H1ghlander, are among the 40 vehicles that will attempt to qualify for the Oct. 8 event, which is sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The team is considered among the frontrunners in the race, which will require the driverless vehicles to navigate a roughly 175-mile course without human assistance.

This is the second such event sponsored by DARPA, which hopes the competition will spur innovation in autonomous ground vehicles. Robotic vehicles are projected to playing a growing role in the military over the next decade.

Other teams still in the competition include those from Stanford, Caltech, Virginia Tech, Oshkosh Truck and Palos Verdes (Calif.) High School.

The Red Team will make one stop in Peoria, Ill., to meet with a major sponsor, Caterpillar Inc., but expects to be ready to begin extensive desert testing near Carson City, Nev., next Monday.

Today's departure hinged on the vehicles first demonstrating competence and reliability in several grueling tests, including a 200-mile run on a road course at BeaverRun MotorSports Complex in Beaver Falls and 25-mile runs through a strip mine near Berlin.

Sandstorm, a veteran of the first Grand Challenge race, had reached all of its milestones last month, but H1ghlander finished its first 200-mile run only on Thursday and three readiness runs through the strip mine on Saturday.

Thanks to several last-minute fixes of subtle, but significant defects in H1ghlander on Friday, the modified H1 Hummer breezed through its final tests, said William "Red" Whittaker, a CMU robotics professor and team leader.

Forty teams will compete in a qualifying event scheduled to begin Sept. 27 at California Speedway in Fontana, Calif. No more than 20 teams will be selected for the race. DARPA has not announced the course yet, but it is expected to be in the Mojave Desert.