Stanford Racing Team won DARPA's 2005 Grand Challenge 


Stanford's autonomous robotic Diesel-powered Volkswagen Touareg R5 won DARPA's 2005 Grand Challenge by traversing a 131.6 mile course through the Mojave desert in 6 hours, 53 minutes, 58 seconds. 



The DARPA Grand Challenge was intended to accelerate research and development in autonomous ground vehicles to help save American lives on the battlefield. Notice that it was not intended to save lives in general—just American lives. In fact, enhancing America's ability to wage war with fewer American casualties could make it easier for America to engage in war and more likely that it will do so.

Of course, these same technologies could be used to develop safer cars for civilian use, which would also save untold numbers of American lives, but Congress did not fund a competition with the explicit aim of achieving that goal. They funded a competition to enable the military to kill other people with fewer American loses. 

Posted: Sunday - October 09, 2005 at 04:00 PM          

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