Robot cars make for the finish (photos)

After a disastrous first edition last year, five competitors in this year's Grand Challenge robot car race actually succeeded in finishing, with a car from Stanford University finishing first.

The winning team last Saturday took 6h 54m to cover the 132 long course with a Diesel-powered Volkswagen Touareg R5.

Each team received a CD with coordinates and had to travel a predefined course while steering around obstacles, followed by a car with officials that monitor the vehicle's movements.

The cars are controlled by computers and use sensors to scan their surroundings. The winning car for instance has the nasty habit of wanting to evade bird poop. During the event, the car puzzled the officials when it made an emergency maneuver at 35 miles per hour after it detected a bird dropping some poop, a team member said in an audio recording on the race's website.

A car called Dora running Apple's OS X on a G5 system failed to pass the qualifying rounds.

The challenge's organizers have put up a very cool website  with plenty of background information, movies, pictures and audio content that's definitely worth checking out.

The winning car (photo: Stanford University)

Start of the challenge

Caltech shows team spirit...

...but Alice, its Ford E350, was disqualified for taking a detour after travelling for 8 miles.

Opening ceremony on September 30

Qualifications in September: tank trap tests the car's navigation system

Qualifications in September: go around the hay, not through it!

Qualifications in September: and the same goes for walls.

All photos except when indicated otherwise: DARPA

Tags: Darpa, Grand challange