Carnegie Mellon Lunar X PRIZE Team

There has been a lot of Internet discussion of the Lunar Rover team announcement from Carnegie Mellon University.

The CMU School of Computer Science issued a press release on the team's intentions. From the press release:

“Planetary exploration is a dream we pursue and a technology we create,” said Whittaker, the Fredkin Research Professor in Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute. “We have spent decades building and testing robotic technologies for just this purpose. We are also veterans of competitive technology challenges. These are the things we do, so combining lunar rovers with a competitive race to the moon is a great opportunity.”

They already have a web site. Here's more about their current rover work for NASA.

The Daily Galaxy posted on their earlier lunar rover work for NASA, and how that should help in the competition.

Universe Today covers CMU's current lunar rover work, and the challenges they'll have for that and for the Google X PRIZE rover.

If you want to follow a long conversation, here's a thread on the CMU entry at Slashdot. Unreasonable Rocket contributes to the conversation.