Robotic Vehicles Race, but Innovation Wins - New York Times

FLORENCE, Ariz. - Cresting a hill on a gravel road at a brisk 20 miles an hour, a driverless, computer-controlled Volkswagen Touareg plunges smartly into a swale. When its laser guidance system spots an overhanging limb, it lurches violently left and right before abruptly swerving off the road.

With their robotic Touareg, known as Stanley, impaled in the brush, the two passengers - Sebastian Thrun and Michael Montemerlo, both Stanford computer scientists - pull off their crash helmets and scramble out to untangle the machine.

A quick survey reveals that the sport utility vehicle is covered with debris, but the bug-eyed laser, radar and optical vision system on top of the vehicle is undamaged. So Stanley and its passengers continue on their way, over 50 miles of dirt road through a cactus-covered landscape, in the final weeks of preparation for the second round of the Pentagon's great race.

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