Lone Wolf, a robot Lotus roadster based at N.C. State University, advanced Thursday to the semifinals in a $3.5 million Pentagon contest to create driverless vehicles for war zones.

The Defense Department invited Lone Wolf and 35 other robot vehicles to take part in qualifying trials Oct. 26 through 31 at the former George Air Force Base in California. The top 20 will compete Nov. 3 in the final race, a 60-mile simulated military supply mission set in urban traffic conditions.

Lone Wolf is a Lotus Elise, a two-seat British sports car, crammed with navigational gear and computers programmed to tell the car where to go. Its creators are a volunteer team of 50 engineers and NCSU students.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency launched its urban challenge in response to a mandate from Congress to have one-third of all ground combat vehicles capable of operating without drivers by 2015.

Grayson Randall of Cary, an IBM senior software engineer who heads the Lone Wolf team, said robot vehicles could reduce the kinds of injuries and deaths caused by roadside bombs in Iraq.

"This competition has a lot of relevance," Randall, 51, said Thursday after the semifinalists were announced. "With the ability to load up a truck with supplies and simply tell it to go to a location without a human driver, any damage that is done to the vehicle eliminates that human element."

The defense research agency is involved these days with bionic arms and cyber weapons. But its director, Tony Tether, expressed awe at the simpler talents of robot cars that can obey traffic laws and navigate four-way-stop intersections.

"We do have an exciting race on our hands," Tether said in a webcast from Anaheim, Calif.

Randall said he and his team took Lone Wolf to Virginia International Raceway near Danville recently to see what the little blue sports car could do on an actual race track.

Lone Wolf reached a speed of 49 mph as it drove itself around the 3.27-mile course, but it was not a perfect run.

The right wheels slipped off the pavement on a sharp curve, and the robot Lotus spun out harmlessly. Randall's team members can be heard giggling like kids on a video clip they posted on YouTube.

It was something any rookie driver might do, Randall said.

"The track people said it's very normal for a novice driver to get the wheels off and then try to get back on the track -- and they always spin out."