* DARPA Grand Challenge winners
An unmanned Volkswagen Touareg R5, powered by seven Pentium M computers, won last week’s DARPA Grand Challenge. The vehicle, nicknamed Stanley, completed the 132-mile route in less than 7 hours.
The Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency’s Challenge was to prove that autonomous ground vehicles could travel long distances across difficult terrain at militarily relevant speeds. No vehicle was able to complete the course in the augural Challenge last year. This year, Stanley, a vehicle retrofitted by Stanford University, started and ended the race in the parking lot of Buffalo Bill’s Casino in Primm, Nev., on the California-Las Vegas border after looping around the Mojave Desert and descending over the 3,459-feet high Beer Bottle Pass.
Stanley is a stock, Diesel-powered Volkswagen Touareg R5, modified with full-body skid plates and a reinforced front bumper. The vehicle is managed by GPS and wheel-speed estimation software. Four laser range finders, a stereo camera, radar and a monocular vision system powered Stanley across the course. Stanley won big in this race – a whopping $2 million payout.
Only four other cars out of the 23 in the race finished the course. Two were from Carnegie Mellon and one was the Grey Team from Metairie, La. The last vehicle to finish didn’t do so until the next morning after DARPA officials repeatedly asked the vehicle’s team to stop because its manned chase vehicle kept breaking down.
Stanley’s human team was funded by Mohr Davidow Ventures, Red Bull, Volkswagen, Intel and Honeywell, as well as start-up Android.
