Boss finally is ready to roll. Its 18 sensors are focused, and while its driver's seat is empty, its computer bank is loaded with 300,000 lines of newly developed software code.

The $2 million question is whether the Chevy Tahoe developed by Carnegie Mellon University has enough technological oomph to become the Dale Earnhardt Jr. of robots. Can Boss win a robot race against the world's best?

"We believe we have a very capable robot," said Chris Urmson, CMU's Tartan Racing director of technology.

Beginning Friday, Tartan Racing's driverless car will try qualifying for the finals of the Urban Challenge on a former Air Force base in Victorville, Calif. Twenty qualifiers then will compete Nov. 3 in a 60-mile "mission" through cityscape on the base with two-way traffic, stop signs, four-way intersections and other roadway obstacles.

Each must follow California driving code and finish within six hours. The one with fewest mistakes or violations that makes the most efficient run will win $2 million. Second place earns $1 million and third place gets $500,000.

The Urban Challenge is the third robotic vehicle competition that the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency has held since 2004 to develop technology to save lives on the battlefield.

DARPA Director Tony Tether said the technological developments he saw during qualifying rounds were mind-blowing.

"Technology has developed at a rate that far exceeded what I expected," he said. "I was stunned."

Key to winning the race, he said, is "the secret sauce" -- computer software whose algorithms will use information from its sensors to help it drive safely through a mock city.

In CMU's case, Boss's 300,000 lines of secret sauce make driving decisions 20 times a second. Boss travels at 30 mph, or 13 yards per second, leaving little margin for error. But it reasons what other vehicles are doing, where it's situated, where it needs to go and the best route to get there.

"There's an awful lot of reasoning happening that people take for granted," Dr. Urmson said. "Getting a robot to do it is incredibly difficult."

Dr. Tether said the competition "was made" for Tartan Racing, whose team consists of "very bright people."

"They've done great," he said, noting CMU's strong finishes in DARPA's Grand Challenges in 2004 and 2005, which were desert endurance races. "It allows teams to focus their energies on a prize, and when you have people who are very bright and focused on something with a timetable, the progress they make comes at a very fast rate."

While Tartan Racing is considered a frontrunner, Dr. Tether said Boss failed to break into the top 5 in qualifying trials in August.

This year's Urban Challenge will generate a Super Bowl atmosphere, he said, expecting tens of thousands of spectators, with concern the event near Los Angeles could turn into another Woodstock.

The Urban Challenge will focus on how robotic vehicles "interact with the unknown," Dr. Tether said.

Boss has traveled 2,000 practice miles, but the challenge is how it operates in traffic in unfamiliar locations.

William "Red" Whittaker, the CMU roboticist who heads Tartan Racing, said his team began developing Boss in June 2006 and now is "fixing the bugs" at another former Air Force base in California.

"Some of the amazing developments of the year are 360-degree sensing, computer planning that strategizes to win, and the most impressive for me -- the software behaviors that achieve the ability to drive through town," Dr. Whittaker said. "There's no question that this is the world's best [field of vehicles] and every team that's coming is there to win."

It's not yet apparent whether any of the vehicles can meet the Urban Challenge, he said.

The event allows the public to see the technology. In time, the technology will allow cars to park themselves, then return to pick up the owner. Cars also will drive themselves on interstate highways with "efficiency, safety and reliability that's far beyond what we have today," Dr. Whittaker said.

Dr. Urmson said he's anxious to see how other teams solve problems Tartan Racing has toiled over for 16 months.

"It will be good see how our robots do and equally great to see what everyone else comes up with," he said. "It will be exciting to see all these creations running around."