Slow and Steady Wins the Race

On 8 October 2005, Stanley, an autonomous vehicle developed by the Stanford Racing Team, eked out a first-place victory in the second DARPA Grand Challenge. The modified Volkswagen Touareg averaged a leisurely 31 kilometers per hour to complete the 212-kilometer off-road course in 6 hours, 54 minutes. Along the way, it overtook the expected winner, Carnegie Mellon's H1ghlander, which had been well in the lead before suffering a mysterious engine glitch. The fact that any vehicle made it across the finish line at all was a testament to the massive improvements in autonomous driving that had taken place in just a year and a half. At the first Grand Challenge, held in March 2004, the lead vehicle completed just 12 km, and many didn't make it out of the parking lot.