Stanley (vehicle)

Stanley is an autonomous car created by Stanford University's Stanford Racing Team in cooperation with the Volkswagen Electronics Research Laboratory (ERL). It won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, earning the Stanford Racing Team the 2 million dollar prize.

Led by Associate Professor Sebastian Thrun, director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab, the Stanford Racing Team was developed solely for the purpose of competing in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge. Stanford did not participate in the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge and was considered to have 20:1 chances of winning the 2005 competition. Stanley is currently located at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, although it was displayed at the 2006 New York International Auto Show, and spent 2 years at the Volkswagen Autostadt Museum (Germany). The Stanford Racing Team entered a new vehicle, a modified Volkswagen Passat wagon, dubbed "Junior", in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. Other key contributors on the team include Michael Montemerlo (software lead), Sven Strohband (lead hardware engineer), David Stavens (roboticist/engineer), Hendrik Dahlkamp (computer vision lead), and Cedric Dupont (vehicle lead), and Pamela Mahoney (communications lead).

Stanley's original frame was a standard European diesel model Volkswagen Touareg provided by Volkswagen's ERL for the competition. The Stanford Racing Team chose the Touareg for its "drive by wire" control system which could be adapted (and was done so by the ERL) to be run directly from an on-board computer without the use of actuators or servo motors (it is important to note however, that the steering wheel was driven by an electric motor and the gear shifting accomplished with a hydraulic piston).

To navigate, Stanley used five roof mounted Sick AG LIDAR units to build a 3-D map of the environment, supplementing the position sensing GPS system. An internal guidance system utilizing gyroscopes and accelerometers monitored the orientation of the vehicle and also served to supplement GPS and other sensor data. Additional guidance data was provided by a video camera used to observe driving conditions out to eighty meters (beyond the range of the LIDAR) and to ensure room enough for acceleration. Stanley also had sensors installed in a wheel well to record a pattern imprinted on the tire and to act as an odometer in case of loss of signal (such as when driving through a tunnel). Using the data from this sensor, the on-board computer can extrapolate how far it has traveled since the signal was lost.

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