ya, srsly. From what I've seen they are hacking together the hardware and then constantly updating the code to get just barely working solutions, oftentimes in the middle of the testing. If some teams are running a fairly complex car physics simulator with simulated input from each of the types of sensors they are using this would be the first I've heard of it.

30 seconds on Google:

http://www.torctech.com/company/news/jaus-standard-emerges-d...

thanks calambrac. obviously I didn't look hard enough.