The official winner of the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge has been crowned, and it's Stanford University's robotic
Volkswagen Touareg, a.k.a. Stanley. The completely autonomous Touareg completed its 132-mile run in the Mojave desert
in 6 hours, 53 minutes and 8 seconds, almost 12 minutes faster than the runner up. The prize: a cool $2 mil.
The crowning of Stanley occurred a day later than scheduled in order to give slower moving vehicles time to finish the
race. Last year's inaugural race was distinguished by the failure of every single contestant to even make it in sight
of the finish line. In order to inspire contestants, the booty was raised from $1 million to $2 million for this year's
challenge. DARPA is the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, so we should expect Stanley to see active
duty on the front line shortly.
[Source: Volkswagen and
Reuters]
More pics with some funny captions after the jump…
K.I.T. lives!
Drink the hard stuff guys, you don’t have to drive home anymore!
That’s one robotic arm you wouldn’t want to get in an arm wrestling match with.
Intel inside, Norton on board.
