Stanley won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge for autonomous vehicles.
Developed by Stanford University’s Stanford Racing Team, Stanley completed the 132-mile desert course in Nevada in 6 hours, 54 minutes. Its victory earned the team the competition’s $2 million prize and marked a major milestone for autonomous driving research.
Stanley was a modified Volkswagen Touareg equipped with sensors, onboard computers, and software for navigation and obstacle detection. The vehicle combined technologies including laser range finding, cameras, radar, inertial sensing, and GPS to remain on the route without a human driver controlling it.
The 2005 race followed the unsuccessful 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge, in which no vehicle finished the course. Stanley is sometimes confused with Junior, Stanford’s later vehicle in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. Junior competed in a structured urban environment, while Stanley won the earlier desert event.