Stanford and VW team up for another DARPA run

Stanford and VW are teaming up to put a driverless Touareg in this year's DARPA Grand Challenge. The competition pits 20 teams against each other for the $2 million prize. The Challenge involves designing a vehicle that can autonomously drive across 175 miles of desert in 10 hours. Sounds simple, but it is anything but simple. In the time that I've been watching the competition, no one has come close to finishing. There is an article from the Seattle Times that mentions this technology is targeted at creating driverless cars for consumer use, but that accomplishment is even farther off than having an driverless vehicle pilot across the desert. Being that this is a DARPA competition, I feel like this technology is more squarely aimed at creating autonomous military applications. Our pals at Engadget have more details.