Stanley: The Robot that Won
the DARPA Grand Challenge• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •• • • • • • • • • • • • • •Sebastian Thrun, Mike Montemerlo,
Hendrik Dahlkamp, David Stavens,Andrei Aron, James Diebel, Philip Fong,John Gale, Morgan Halpenny,
Gabriel Hoffmann, Kenny Lau, Celia Oakley,Mark Palatucci, Vaughan Pratt,and Pascal Stang

Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Stanford University
Stanford, California 94305
Sven Strohband, Cedric Dupont,
Lars-Erik Jendrossek, Christian Koelen,Charles Markey, Carlo Rummel,
Joe van Niekerk, Eric Jensen,
and Philippe Alessandrini

Volkswagen of America, Inc.
Electronics Research Laboratory
4009 Miranda Avenue, Suite 100
Palo Alto, California 94304
Gary Bradski, Bob Davies, Scott Ettinger,
Adrian Kaehler, and Ara NefianIntel Research
2200 Mission College BoulevardSanta Clara, California 95052
Pamela Mahoney

Mohr Davidow Ventures
3000 Sand Hill Road, Bldg. 3, Suite 290
Menlo Park, California 94025

Received 13 April 2006; accepted 27 June 2006

Journal of Field Robotics 23(9), 661–692 (2006) © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). • DOI: 10.1002/rob.20147

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This article describes the robot Stanley, which won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge.
Stanley was developed for high-speed desert driving without manual intervention. The
robot’s software system relied predominately on state-of-the-art artificial intelligence
technologies, such as machine learning and probabilistic reasoning. This paper describes
the major components of this architecture, and discusses the results of the Grand Challenge race. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

1.

INTRODUCTION

The Grand Challenge was launched by the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency 共DARPA兲 in2003 to spur innovation in unmanned ground vehicle
navigation. The goal of the Challenge was to develop
an autonomous robot capable of traversing unrehearsed off-road terrain. The first competition, which
carried a prize of $1M, took place on March 13, 2004.
It required robots to navigate a 142-mile long course
through the Mojave desert in no more than 10 h. 107
teams registered and 15 raced, yet none of the participating robots navigated more than 5% of the entire
course. The challenge was repeated on October 8,
2005, with an increased prize of $2M. This time, 195
teams registered and 23 raced. Of those, five teams
finished. Stanford’s robot “Stanley” finished thecourse ahead of all other vehicles in 6 h, 53 min, and58 s, and was declared the winner of the DARPA
Grand Challenge; see Figure 1.
This paper describes the robot Stanley, and its
software system in particular. Stanley was developedby a team of researchers to advance the state-of-theart in autonomous driving. Stanley’s success is the re-sult of an intense development effort led by Stanford
University, and involving experts from Volkswagenof America, Mohr Davidow Ventures, Intel Research,
and a number of other entities. Stanley is based on a
2004 Volkswagen Touareg R5 TDI, outfitted with a six
processor computing platform provided by Intel, anda suite of sensors and actuators for autonomous driving. Figure 2 shows images of Stanley during the race.
The main technological challenge in the development of Stanley was to build a highly reliable system,
capable of driving at relatively high speeds throughdiverse and unstructured off-road environments, andto do all this with high precision. These requirements
led to a number of advances in the field of autonomous navigation, as surveyed in this paper. Methods
were developed, and existing methods extended, in
the areas of long-range terrain perception, real-timecollision avoidance, and stable vehicle control on slippery and rugged terrain. Many of these developments were driven by the speed requirement, which
rendered many classical techniques in the off-road
driving field unsuitable. In pursuing these developments, the research team brought to bear algorithms

Figure 1. 共a兲 At approximately 1:40 pm on Oct 8, 2005, Stanley was the first robot to complete the DARPA Grand
Challenge. 共b兲 The robot is being honored by DARPA Director Dr. Tony Tether.
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Thrun et al.: Stanley: The Robot that Won • 663

Figure 3. A section of the RDDF file from the 2005
DARPA Grand Challenge. The corridor varies in widthand maximum speed. Waypoints are more frequent inturns.
Figure 2. Images from the race.

from diverse areas including distributed systems,
machine learning, and probabilistic robotics.
1.1.

Race Rules

The rules 共DARPA, 2004兲 of the DARPA Grand Challenge were simple. Contestants were required tobuild autonomous ground vehicles capable of traversing a desert course up to 175-miles long in lessthan 10 h. The first robot to complete the course inunder 10 h would win the challenge and the $2M
prize. Absolutely no manual intervention was allowed. The robots were started by DARPA personnel
and from that point on had to drive themselves.
Teams only saw their robots at the starting line and,with luck, at the finish line.
Both the 2004 and 2005 races were held in the
Mojave desert in the southwest United States. The
course terrain varied from high-quality graded dirt
roads to winding rocky mountain passes; see Figure
2. A small fraction of each course traveled along
paved roads. The 2004 course started in Barstow,
Journal of Field Robotics DOI 10.1002/rob

CA, approximately 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles, and finished in Primm, NV, approximately
30 miles southwest of Las Vegas. The 2005 course
both started and finished in Primm, NV.
The specific race course was kept secret from allteams until 2 h before the race. At this time, eachteam was given a description of the course on CDROM in a DARPA-defined route definition data format 共RDDF兲. The RDDF is a list of longitudes, latitudes, and corridor widths that define the courseboundary, and a list of associated speed limits; an
example segment is shown in Figure 3. Robots thattravel substantially beyond the course boundary risk
disqualification. In the 2005 race, the RDDF contained 2,935 waypoints.
The width of the race corridor generally tracked
the width of the road, varying between 3 and 30 m
in the 2005 race. Speed limits were used to protect
important infrastructure and ecology along thecourse, and to maintain the safety of DARPA chasedrivers who followed behind each robot. The speed
limits varied between 5 and 50 mph. The RDDF defined the approximate route that robots would take,

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Figure 4. 共a兲 View of the vehicle’s roof rack with sensors. 共b兲 The computing system in the trunk of the vehicle. 共c兲 The
gear shifter, control screen, and manual override buttons.

so no global path planning was required. As a result,
the race was primarily a test of high-speed roadfinding, obstacle detection, and avoidance in desert
terrain.
The robots all competed on the same course;
starting one after another at 5 min intervals. When afaster robot overtook a slower one, the slower robot
was paused by DARPA officials, allowing the second
robot to pass the first as if it were a static obstacle.
This eliminated the need for robots to handle thecase of dynamic passing.

1.2.

Team Composition

The Stanford Racing Team team was organized into
four major groups. The Vehicle Group oversaw all
modifications and component developments related
to the core vehicle. This included the drive-by-wiresystems, the sensor and computer mounts, and thecomputer systems. The group was led by researchers
from Volkswagen of America’s Electronics ResearchLab. The Software Group developed all software, including the navigation software and the various
health monitor and safety systems. The softwaregroup was led by researchers affiliated with Stanford University. The Testing Group was responsible
for testing all system components and the system as
a whole, according to a specified testing schedule.
The members of this group were separate from anyof the other groups. The testing group was led byresearchers affiliated with Stanford University. The
Communications Group managed all media relations
and fund raising activities of the Stanford Racing
Team. The communications group was led by employees of Mohr Davidow Ventures, with participation from all other sponsors. The operations oversight was provided by a steering board that included
all major supporters.

2.

VEHICLE

Stanley is based on a diesel-powered Volkswagen
Touareg R5. The Touareg has four-wheel drive
共4WD兲, variable-height air suspension, and automaticelectronic locking differentials. To protect the vehicle
from environmental impact, Stanley has been outfitted with skid plates and a reinforced front bumper. A
custom interface enables direct electronic actuation ofboth the throttle and brakes. A DC motor attached tothe steering column provides electronic steering control. A linear actuator attached to the gear shifter
shifts the vehicle between drive, reverse, and parking
gears 关Figure 4共c兲兴. Vehicle data, such as individual
wheel speeds and steering angle, are sensed automatically and communicated to the computer systemthrough a CAN bus interface.
The vehicle’s custom-made roof rack is shown in
Figure 4共a兲. It holds nearly all of Stanley’s sensors.
The roof provides the highest vantage point of the vehicle; from this point, the visibility of the terrain isbest, and the access to global positioning system
共GPS兲 signals is least obstructed. For environment
perception, the roof rack houses five SICK laser range
finders. The lasers are pointed forward along thedriving direction of the vehicle, but with slightly different tilt angles. The lasers measure cross sections of
the approaching terrain at different ranges out to
25 m in front of the vehicle. The roof rack also holds
a color camera for long-range road perception, whichis pointed forward and angled slightly downward.
For long-range detection of large obstacles, Stanley’sroof rack also holds two 24 GHz RADAR sensors,
supplied by Smart Microwave Sensors. Both RADAR
sensors cover the frontal area up to 200 m, with a coverage angle in azimuth of about 20°. Two antennae of
this system are mounted on both sides of the laser
sensor array. The lasers, camera, and radar system
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Thrun et al.: Stanley: The Robot that Won • 665

comprise the environment sensor group of the system.
That is, they inform Stanley of the terrain ahead, sothat Stanley can decide where to drive, and at what
speed.
Further back, the roof rack holds a number of additional antennae: One for Stanley’s GPS positioning
system and two for the GPS compass. The GPS positioning unit is a L1/L2/Omnistar HP receiver. Together with a trunk-mounted inertial measurement
unit 共IMU兲, the GPS systems are the positioning sensor
group, whose primary function is to estimate the location and velocity of the vehicle relative to an external coordinate system.
Finally, a radio antenna and three additional GPS
antennae from the DARPA E-Stop system are also located on the roof. The E-Stop system is a wireless linkthat allows a chase vehicle following Stanley to safely
stop the vehicle in case of emergency. The roof rack
also holds a signaling horn, a warning light, and two
manual E-stop buttons.
Stanley’s computing system is located in the vehicle’s trunk, as shown in Figure 4共b兲. Special air
ducts direct air flow from the vehicle’s air conditioning system into the trunk for cooling. The trunk features a shock-mounted rack that carries an array of
six Pentium M computers, a Gigabit Ethernet switch,and various devices that interface to the physical sensors and the Touareg’s actuators. It also features acustom-made power system with backup batteries,
and a switch box that enables Stanley to power-cycle
individual system components through software.
The DARPA-provided E-Stop is located on this rackon additional shock compensation. The trunk assembly also holds the custom interface to the Volkswagen
Touareg’s actuators: The brake, throttle, gear shifter,and steering controller. A six degree-of-freedom IMU
is rigidly attached to the vehicle frame underneaththe computing rack in the trunk.
The total power requirement of the added instrumentation is approximately 500 W, which is provided through the Touareg’s stock alternator. Stanley’s backup battery system supplies an additional
buffer to accommodate long idling periods in desert
heat.
The operating system run on all computers isLinux. Linux was chosen due to its excellent networking and time sharing capabilities. During the race,
Stanley executed the race software on three of the six
computers; a fourth was used to log the race data
共and two computers were idle兲. One of the three racecomputers was entirely dedicated to video processJournal of Field Robotics DOI 10.1002/rob

ing, whereas the other two executed all other software. The computers were able to poll the sensors at
up to 100 Hz, and to control the steering, throttle andbrake at frequencies up to 20 Hz.
An important aspect in Stanley’s design was toretain street legality, so that a human driver could
safely operate the robot as a conventional passenger
car. Stanley’s custom user interface enables a driver toengage and disengage the computer system at will,
even while the vehicle is in motion. As a result, thedriver can disable computer control at any time of thedevelopment, and regain manual control of the vehicle. To this end, Stanley is equipped with several
manual override buttons located near the driver seat.
Each of these switches controls one of the three major
actuators 共brakes, throttle, and steering兲. An additional central emergency switch disengages all computer control and transforms the robot into a conventional vehicle. While this feature was of no relevanceto the actual race 共in which no person sat in the car兲,
it proved greatly beneficial during software development. The interface made it possible to operate Stanley autonomously with people inside, as a dedicatedsafety driver could always catch computer glitches
and assume full manual control at any time.
During the actual race, there was of course no
driver in the vehicle, and all driving decisions weremade by Stanley’s computers. Stanley possessed an
operational control interface realized through atouch-sensitive screen on the driver’s console. This
interface allowed Government personnel to shut
down and restart the vehicle, if it became necessary.

3.

SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE

3.1.

Design Principles

Before both the 2004 and 2005 Grand Challenges,
DARPA revealed to the competitors that a stock
4WD pickup truck would be physically capable oftraversing the entire course. These announcementssuggested that the innovations necessary to successfully complete the challenge would be in designing
intelligent driving software, not in designing exotic
vehicles. This announcement and the performance ofthe top finishers in the 2004 race guided the design
philosophy of the Stanford Racing Team: Treat autonomous navigation as a software problem.

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In relation to previous work on robotics architectures, Stanley’s software architecture is related to thewell-known three-layer architecture 共Gat, 1998兲, albeit
without a long-term symbolic planning method. A
number of guiding principles proved essential in thedesign of the software architecture:
3.1.1. Control and Data Pipeline
There is no centralized master process in Stanley’s
software system. All modules are executed at theirown pace, without interprocess synchronization
mechanisms. Instead, all data are globally timestamped, and time stamps are used when integrating multiple data sources. The approach reduces therisk of deadlocks and undesired processing delays.
To maximize the configurability of the system,
nearly all interprocess communication is implemented through publish-subscribe mechanisms. The
information from sensors to actuators flows in asingle direction; no information is received morethan once by the same module. At any point in time,
all modules in the pipeline are working simultaneously, thereby maximizing the information
throughput and minimizing the latency of the software system.

ware components, and automatically restart or
power-cycle such components when a failure is observed. In this way, the software is robust to certain
occurrences, such as crashing or hanging of a software modules or stalled sensors.
3.1.4. Development Support
Finally, the software is structured so as to aid development and debugging of the system. The developer
can easily run just a subsystem of the software, andeffortlessly migrate modules across different processors. To facilitate debugging during the development process, all data are logged. By using a special
replay module, the software can be run on recorded
data. A number of visualization tools were developed that make it possible to inspect data and internal variables while the vehicle is in motion, or while
replaying previously logged data. The development
process used a version control process with a strict
set of rules for the release of race-quality software.
Overall, we found that the flexibility of the software
during development was essential in achieving thehigh level of reliability necessary for long-term autonomous operation.
3.2.

3.1.2. State Management
Even though the software is distributed, the state of
the system is maintained by local authorities. There
are a number of state variables in the system. The
health state is locally managed in the health monitor;
the parameter state in the parameter server; the global driving mode is maintained in a finite state automaton; and the vehicle state is estimated in thestate estimator module. The environment state is
broken down into multiple maps 共laser, vision, andradar兲. Each of these maps are maintained in dedicated modules. As a result, all other modules will
receive values that are mutually consistent. The exact state variables are discussed in later sections of
this paper. All state variables are broadcast to relevant modules of the software system through apublish-subscribe mechanism.

The race software consisted of approximately 30
modules executed in parallel 共Figure 5兲. The system
is broken down into six layers which correspond to
the following functions: Sensor interface, perception,
control, vehicle interface, user interface, and global
services.
1.

2.
3.1.3. Reliability
The software places strong emphasis on the overall
reliability of the robotic system. Special modules
monitor the health of individual software and hard-

Processing Pipeline

The sensor interface layer comprises a number of software modules concerned with receiving and time stamping all sensor data.
The layer receives data from each laser sensor
at 75 Hz, from the camera at approximately
12 Hz, the GPS and GPS compass at 10 Hz,
and the IMU and the Touareg CAN bus at
100 Hz. This layer also contains a databaseserver with the course coordinates 共RDDF
file兲.
The perception layer maps sensor data into
internal models. The primary module in thislayer is the unscented Kalman filter 共UKF兲
vehicle state estimator, which determines thevehicle’s coordinates, orientation, and velocities. Three different mapping modules build
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Thrun et al.: Stanley: The Robot that Won • 667

Figure 5. Flowchart of Stanley software system. The software is roughly divided into six main functional groups: Sensor
interface, perception, control, vehicle interface, and user interface. There are a number of cross-cutting services, such as
the process controller and the logging modules.

3.

two-dimensional 共2D兲 environment maps
based on lasers, the camera, and the radarsystem. A road finding module uses the laserderived maps to find the boundary of a road,so that the vehicle can center itself laterally.
Finally, a surface assessment module extracts
parameters of the current road for the purpose of determining safe vehicle speeds.
The control layer is responsible for regulating the steering, throttle, and brake responseof the vehicle. A key module is the path planner, which sets the trajectory of the vehicle insteering and velocity space. This trajectory ispassed to two closed-loop trajectory tracking

Journal of Field Robotics DOI 10.1002/rob

4.

controllers, one for the steering control andone for brake and throttle control. Both controllers send low-level commands to the actuators that faithfully execute the trajectory
emitted by the planner. The control layer also
features a top level control module, implemented as a simple finite state automaton.
This level determines the general vehicle
mode in response to user commands received
through the in-vehicle touch screen or thewireless E-stop, and maintains gear state incase backward motion is required.
The vehicle interface layer serves as the interface to the robot’s drive-by-wire system. It

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6.

Journal of Field Robotics—2006

contains all interfaces to the vehicle’s brakes,
throttle, and steering wheel. It also features
the interface to the vehicle’s server, a circuitthat regulates the physical power to many of
the system components.
The user interface layer comprises the remote E-stop and a touch-screen module forstarting up the software.
The global services layer provides a numberof basic services for all software modules.
Naming and communication services areprovides through Carnegie Mellon University’s 共CMU’s兲 interprocess communication
toolkit 共Simmons & Apfelbaum, 1998兲. A centralized parameter server maintains a database of all vehicle parameters and updates
them in a consistent manner. The physicalpower of individual system components isregulated by the power server. Another module monitors the health of all systems components and restarts individual system components when necessary. Clock synchronization is achieved through a time server. Finally, a data logging server dumps sensor,
control, and diagnostic data to disk for replay
and analysis.

The following sections will describe Stanley’s coresoftware processes in greater detail. The paper willthen conclude with a description of Stanley’s performance in the Grand Challenge.

4.

VEHICLE STATE ESTIMATION

Estimating vehicle state is a key prerequisite for precision driving. Inaccurate pose estimation can cause
the vehicle to drive outside the corridor, or build terrain maps that do not reflect the state of the robot’s
environment, leading to poor driving decisions. In
Stanley, the vehicle state comprises a total of 15 variables. The design of this parameter space follows
standard methodology 共Farrell & Barth, 1999; van der
Merwe & Wan, 2004兲, as indicated in Table I.
An unscented Kalman filter 共UKF兲 共Julier & Uhlmann, 1997兲 estimates these quantities at an update
rate of 100 Hz. The UKF incorporates observations
from the GPS, the GPS compass, the IMU, and thewheel encoders. The GPS system provides both absolute position and velocity measurements, which areboth incorporated into the UKF. From a mathematical

Table I. Standard methodology of Stanley’s 15 variables.
No. of values State variable
3

Position 共longitude, latitude, and altitude兲

3

Velocity

3

Orientation 共Euler angles: roll, pitch,and yaw兲

3

Accelerometer biases

3

Gyro biases

point of view, the sigma point linearization in the
UKF often yields a lower estimation error than thelinearization based on Taylor expansion in the extended Kalman filter 共EKF兲 共van der Merwe, 2004兲. To
many, the UKF is also preferable from an implementation standpoint because it does not require the explicit calculation of any Jacobians; although those canbe useful for further analysis.
While GPS is available, the UKF uses only a“weak” model. This model corresponds to a moving
mass that can move in any direction. Hence, in normal operating mode, the UKF places no constraint on
the direction of the velocity vector relative to the vehicle’s orientation. Such a model is clearly inaccurate,
but the vehicle-ground interactions in slippery desert
terrain are generally difficult to model. The moving
mass model allows for any slipping or skidding that
may occur during off-road driving.
However, this model performs poorly during
GPS outages, as the position of the vehicle relies
strongly on the accuracy of the IMU’s accelerometers.
As a consequence, a more restrictive UKF motion
model is used during GPS outages. This model constrains the vehicle to only move in the direction it ispointed. The integration of the IMU’s gyroscopes fororientation, coupled with wheel velocities for computing the position, is able to maintain accurate poseof the vehicle during GPS outages of up to 2 minlong; the accrued error is usually in the order of centimeters. Stanley’s health monitor will decrease themaximum vehicle velocity during GPS outages to
10 mph in order to maximize the accuracy of the restricted vehicle model. Figure 6共a兲 shows the result of
position estimation during a GPS outage with the
weak vehicle model; Figure 6共b兲, the result with thestrong vehicle model. This experiment illustrates theperformance of this filter during a GPS outage.
Clearly, accurate vehicle modeling during GPS outJournal of Field Robotics DOI 10.1002/rob

Thrun et al.: Stanley: The Robot that Won • 669

Figure 6. UKF state estimation when GPS becomes unavailable. The area covered by the robot is approximately
100⫻ 100 m. The large ellipses illlustrate the position uncertainty after losing GPS. 共a兲 Without integrating thewheel motion the result is highly erroneous. 共b兲 The wheel
motion clearly improves the result.

ages is essential. In an experiment on a paved road,we found that even after 1.3 km of travel without
GPS on a cyclic course, the accumulated vehicle error
was only 1.7 m.

5.

LASER TERRAIN MAPPING

5.1.

Terrain LabelingTo safely avoid obstacles, Stanley must be capable ofaccurately detecting nondrivable terrain at a sufficient range to stop or take the appropriate evasive
action. The faster the vehicle is moving, the farther
away obstacles must be detected. Lasers are used as
the basis for Stanley’s short and medium range ob-

stacle avoidance. Stanley is equipped with five
single-scan laser range finders mounted on the roof,
tilted downward to scan the road ahead. Figure 7共a兲
illustrates the scanning process. Each laser scan generates a vector of 181 range measurements spaced
0.5° apart. Projecting these scans into the global coordinate frame according, to the estimated pose of
the vehicle, results in a 3D point cloud for each laser.
Figure 7共b兲 shows an example of the point clouds
acquired by the different sensors. The coordinates ofsuch 3D points are denoted 共Xik Yik Zik兲; where k is thetime index at which the point was acquired, and i is
the index of the laser beam.
Obstacle detection on laser point clouds can beformulated as a classification problem, assigning toeach 2D location in a surface grid one of three possible values: Occupied, free, and unknown. A location is occupied by an obstacle if we can find two
nearby points whose vertical distance 兩Zik − Zjm兩 exceeds a critical vertical distance ␦. It is considereddrivable 共free of obstacles兲 if no such points can befound, but at least one of the readings falls into thecorresponding grid cell. If no reading falls into thecell, the drivability of this cell is considered unknown. The search for nearby points is conveniently
organized in a 2D grid, the same grid used as the
final drivability map that is provided to the vehicle’snavigation engine. Figure 8 shows the example grid
map. As indicated in this figure, the map assigns
terrain to one of three classes: Drivable, occupied, or
unknown.
Unfortunately, applying this classification

Figure 7. 共a兲 Illustration of a laser sensor: The sensor is angled downward to scan the terrain in front of the vehicle as it
moves. Stanley possesses five such sensors, mounted at five different angles. 共b兲 Each laser acquires a three-dimensional
共3D兲 point cloud over time. The point cloud is analyzed for drivable terrain and potential obstacles.
Journal of Field Robotics DOI 10.1002/rob

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Figure 8. Examples of occupancy maps: 共a兲 An underpass and 共b兲 a road.

scheme directly to the laser data yields results inappropriate for reliable robot navigation. Figure 9shows such an instance, in which a small error in thevehicle’s roll/pitch estimation leads to a massive terrain classification error, forcing the vehicle off theroad. Small pose errors are magnified into large errors in the projected positions of laser points because
the lasers are aimed at the road up to 30 m in frontof the vehicle. In our reference dataset of labeled ter-rain, we found that 12.6% of known drivable area isclassified as obstacle, for a height threshold parameter ␦ = 15 cm. Such situations occur even for roll/
pitch errors smaller than 0.5°. Pose errors of thismagnitude can be avoided by pose estimation systems that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, butsuch a choice was too costly for this project.
The key insight to solving this problem is illustrated in Figure 10. This graph plots the perceived

Figure 9. Small errors in pose estimation 共smaller than 0.5°兲 induce massive terrain classification errors, which if ignored
could force the robot off the road. These images show two consecutive snapshots of a map that forces Stanley off the road.
Here, obstacles are plotted in red, free space in white, and unknown territory in gray. The blue lines mark the corridor as
defined by the RDDF.
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Thrun et al.: Stanley: The Robot that Won • 671

for a cell which was previously observed. Then, one
or more of three cases will be true:
1.

2.

Figure 10. Correlation of time and vertical measurement
error in the laser data analysis.

3.
obstacle height 兩Zik − Zjm兩 along the vertical axis for acollection of grid cells taken from flat terrain.
Clearly, for some grid cells, the perceived height isenormous—despite the fact that in reality, the surface is flat. However, this function is not random.
The horizontal axis depicts the time difference ⌬t兩k
− m兩 between the acquisition of those scans. Obviously, the error is strongly correlated with theelapsed time between the two scans.
To model this error, Stanley uses a first-orderMarkov model, which models the drift of the pose
estimation error over time. The test for the presenceof an obstacle is therefore a probabilistic test. Givenj
two points 共Xik Yik Zik兲T and 共Xm
Yjm Zjm兲T, the height
difference is distributed according to a normal distribution whose variance scales linearly with thetime difference 兩k − m兩. Thus, Stanley uses a probabilistic test for the presence of an obstacle, of the typep共兩Zik − Zjm兩 ⬎ ␦兲 ⬎ ␣ ,共1兲

where ␣ is a confidence threshold, e.g., ␣ = 0.05.
When applied over a 2D grid, the probabilistic
method can be implemented efficiently so that only
two measurements have to be stored per grid cell.
This is due to the fact that each measurement defines
a bound on future Z values for obstacle detection.
For example, suppose we observe a measurement
Journal of Field Robotics DOI 10.1002/rob

The measurement might be a witness of an
obstacle, according to the probabilistic test. In
this case, Stanley simply marks the cell as an
obstacle and no further testing takes place.
The measurement does not trigger as a witness of an obstacle; but, in future tests, it establishes a tighter lower bound on the minimum Z value than the previously stored
measurement. In this case, our algorithm
simply replaces the previous measurementwith this one. The rationale behind this issimple: If the measurement is more restrictive
than the previous one, there will not be a situation where a test against this point would
fail, while a test against the older one would
succeed. Hence, the old point can safely bediscarded.
The third case is equivalent to the second, butwith a refinement of the upper value. A measurement may simultaneously refine thelower and the upper bounds.

The fact that only two measurements per grid cell
have to be stored renders this algorithm highly efficient in space and time.

5.2.

Data-Driven Parameter Tuning

A final step in developing this mapping algorithm
addresses parameter tuning. Our approach and theunderlying probabilistic Markov model possess anumber of unknown parameters. These parameters
include the height threshold ␦, the statistical acceptance probability threshold ␣, and various Markov
chain error parameters 共the noise covariances of theprocess noise and the measurement noise兲.
Stanley uses a discriminative learning algorithm
for locally optimizing these parameters. This algorithm tunes the parameters in a way that maximizes
the discriminative accuracy of the resulting terrain
analysis on labeled training data.
The data are labeled through human driving,similar in spirit to Pomerleau 共1993兲. Figure 11 illustrates the idea: A human driver is instructed to only
drive over obstacle-free terrain. Grid cells traversedby the vehicle are then labeled as drivable: This area
corresponds to the blue stripe in Figure 11. A stripe
to the left and right of this corridor is assumed to be

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Figure 11. Terrain labeling for parameter tuning: The
area traversed by the vehicle is labeled as “drivable”
共blue兲 and two stripes at a fixed distance to the left and theright are labeled as “obstacles” 共red兲. While these labels
are only approximate, they are extremely easy to obtainand significantly improve the accuracy of the resulting
map when used for parameter tuning.

time, the rate at which the area off the road is labeled
as an obstacle remains approximately constant 共from
22.6% to 22.0%兲. This rate is not 100%, simply because most of the terrain there is still flat and drivable. Our approach for data acquisition mislabels theflat terrain as nondrivable. Such mislabeling however, does not interfere with the parameter tuningalgorithm, and hence is preferable to the tedious
process of labeling pixels manually.
Figure 12 shows an example of the mapper inaction. A snapshot of the vehicle from the side illustrates that a part of the surface is scanned multiple
times due to a change of pitch. As a result, the nonprobabilistic method hallucinates a large occupied
area in the center of the road, shown in panel 共c兲 ofFigure 12. Our probabilistic approach overcomes thiserror and generates a map that is good enough fordriving. A second example is shown in Figure 13.

6.
all obstacles, as indicated by the red stripes in Figure
11. The distance between the drivable and obstacle isset by hand, based on the average road width for asegment of data. Clearly, not all of those cells labeled
as obstacles are actually occupied by obstacles; however, even training against an approximate labelingis enough to improve the overall performance of the
mapper.
The learning algorithm is now implemented
through coordinate ascent. In the outer loop, the algorithm performs coordinate ascent relative to adata-driven scoring function. Given an initial guess,the coordinate ascent algorithm modifies each parameter one after another by a fixed amount. It thendetermines if the new value constitutes an improvement over the previous value when evaluated over alogged data set, and retains it accordingly. If for agiven interval size no improvement can be found,the search interval is cut in half and the search iscontinued, until the search interval becomes smaller
than a preset minimum search interval 共at which
point the tuning is terminated兲.
The probabilistic analysis, paired with the discriminative algorithm for parameter tuning, has asignificant effect on the accuracy of the terrain labels.
Using an independent testing data set, we find thatthe false positive rate 共the area labeled as drivable in
Figure 11兲 drops from 12.6% to 0.002%. At the same

COMPUTER VISION TERRAIN ANALYSISThe effective maximum range at which obstacles canbe detected with the laser mapper is approximately
22 m. This range is sufficient for Stanley to reliably
avoid obstacles at speeds up to 25 mph. Based on the2004 Race Course, the development team estimatedthat Stanley would need to reach speeds of 35 mph inorder to successfully complete the challenge. To extend the sensor range enough to allow safe driving at
35 mph, Stanley uses a color camera to find drivablesurfaces at ranges exceeding that of the laser analysis.
Figure 14 compares laser and vision mapping side byside. The left diagram shows a laser map acquired
during the race; here, obstacles are detected at an approximate 22 m range. The vision map for the same
situation is shown on the right side. This map extends
beyond 70 m 共each yellow circle corresponds to 10 m
range兲.
Our work builds on a long history of research onroad finding 共Pomerleau, 1991; Crisman & Thorpe,
1993兲; see also Dickmanns 共2002兲. To find the road, thevision module classifies images into drivable andnondrivable regions. This classification task is generally difficult, as the road appearance is affected by anumber of factors that are not easily measured andchange over time, such as the surface material of theroad, lighting conditions, dust on the lens of the camera, and so on. This suggests that an adaptive approach is necessary, in which the image interpretation
changes as the vehicle moves and conditions change.
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Thrun et al.: Stanley: The Robot that Won • 673

Figure 12. Example of pitching combined with small pose estimation errors: 共a兲 The reading of the center beam of one of
the lasers, integrated over time 共some of the terrain is scanned twice.兲; 共b兲 shows 3D point cloud; 共c兲 resulting map without
probabilistic analysis, and 共d兲 map with probabilistic analysis. The map shown in 共c兲 possesses a phantom obstacle, large
enough to force the vehicle off the road.

The camera images are not the only source of information about upcoming terrain available to the vision mapper. Although we are interested in using vision to classify the drivability of terrain beyond thelaser range, we already have such drivability information from the laser in the near range. All that is re-quired from the vision routine is to extend the reachof the laser analysis. This is different from thegeneral-purpose image interpretation problem, inwhich no such data would be available.
Stanley finds drivable surfaces by projecting
drivable area from the laser analysis into the camera

Figure 13. A second example of pitching combined with small page estimation errors.
Journal of Field Robotics DOI 10.1002/rob

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Figure 14. Comparison of the laser-based 共left兲 and the image-based 共right兲 mapper. For scale, circles are spaced aroundthe vehicle at a 10 m distance. This diagram illustrates that the reach of lasers is approximately 22 m, whereas the vision
module often looks 70 m ahead.

image. More specifically, Stanley extracts a quadrilateral ahead of the robot in the laser map, so that all
grid cells within this quadrilateral are drivable. The
range of this quadrilateral is typically between 10 and
20 m ahead of the robot. An example of such a quadrilateral is shown in Figure 14共a兲. Using straightforward geometric projection, this quadrilateral is thenmapped into the camera image, as illustrated in Figures 15共a兲 and 15共b兲. An adaptive computer vision algorithm then uses the image pixels inside this quadrilateral as training examples for the concept ofdrivable surface.
The learning algorithm maintains a mixture ofGaussians that model the color of drivable terrain.
Each such mixture is a Gaussian defined in the red/green/blue 共RGB兲 color space of individual pixels;
the total number of Gaussians is denoted as n. For
each mixture, the learning algorithm maintains amean RGB color ␮i, a covariance ⌺i, and a count mi of
the total number of image pixels that were used totrain this Gaussian.
When a new image is observed, the pixels in thedrivable quadrilateral are mapped into a smaller
number of k “local” Gaussians using the EM algorithm 共Duda & Hart, 1973兲, with k ⬍ n 共the covarianceof these local Gaussians are inflated by a small value
so as to avoid overfitting兲. These k local Gaussians arethen merged into the memory of the learning algorithm, in a way that allows for slow and fast adaptation. The learning adapts to the image in two possible ways; by adjusting the previously foundinternal Gaussian to the actual image pixels, and by
introducing new Gaussians and discarding older
ones. Both adaptation steps are essential. The first enables Stanley to adapt to slowly changing lighting

Figure 15. This figure illustrates the processing stages of the computer vision system: 共a兲 a raw image; 共b兲 the processed
image with the laser quadrilateral and a pixel classification; 共c兲 the pixel classification before thresholding; and 共d兲 horizon
detection for sky removal.
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Thrun et al.: Stanley: The Robot that Won • 675

conditions; the second makes it possible to adapt rapidly to a new surface color 共e.g., when Stanley moves
from a paved to an unpaved road兲.
In detail, to update the memory, consider the jth
local Gaussian. The learning algorithm determines
the closest Gaussian in the global memory, wherecloseness is determined through the Mahalanobis
distance
d共i,j兲 = 共␮i − ␮j兲T共⌺i + ⌺j兲−1共␮i − ␮j兲.

共2兲Let i be the index of the minimizing Gaussian in thememory. The learning algorithm then chooses one oftwo possible outcomes:
1.

2.

The distance d共i , j兲 艋 ␾, where ␾ is an acceptance threshold. The learning algorithm thenassumes that the global Gaussian j is representative of the local Gaussian i, and adaptation proceeds slowly. The parameters of
this global Gaussian are set to the weighted
mean:

␮i ←

m i␮ im j␮ j+,mi + mj mi + mj

共3兲

⌺i ←

m i⌺ im j⌺ j+,mi + mj mi + mj

共4兲

mi ← mi + mj ,共5兲where mj is the number of pixels in the image
that correspond to the jth Gaussian.
The distance d共i , j兲 ⬎ ␾ for any Gaussian i in
the memory. This is the case when none of theGaussian in memory are near the local
Gaussian extracted form the image, where
nearness is measured by the Mahalanobis
distance. The algorithm then generates a new
Gaussian in the global memory, with parameters ␮j, ⌺j, and mj. If all n slots are alreadytaken in the memory, the algorithm “forgets”
the Gaussian with the smallest total pixel
count mi, and replaces it by the new local
Gaussian.

After this step, each counter mi in the memory is discounted by a factor of ␥ ⬍ 1. This exponential decay
Journal of Field Robotics DOI 10.1002/rob

term makes sure that the Gaussians in memory can be
moved in new directions as the appearance of thedrivable surface changes over time.
For finding the drivable surface, the learned
Gaussians are used to analyze the image. The image
analysis uses an initial sky removal step defined in
Ettinger, Nechyba, Ifju & Waszak 共2003兲. A subsequent flood-fill step then removes additional sky pixels not found by the algorithm in Ettinger et al. 共2003兲.
The remaining pixels are than classified using thelearned mixture of Gaussian, in the straightforward
way. Pixels whose RGB value is near one or more of
the learned Gaussians are classified as drivable; allother pixels are flagged as nondrivable. Finally, only
regions connected to the laser quadrilateral are labeled as drivable.
Figure 15 illustrates the key processing steps.
Panel 共a兲 in this figure shows a raw camera image,and panel 共b兲 shows the image after processing. Pixels classified as drivable are colored red, whereas
nondrivable pixels are colored blue. The remaining
two panels in Figure 15 show intermediate processing steps: The classification response before thresholding 关panel 共c兲兴 and the result of the sky finder关panel 共d兲兴.
Due to the ability to create new Gaussians on thefly, Stanley’s vision routine can adapt to new terrain
within seconds. Figure 16 shows data acquired at the
National Qualification Event 共NQE兲 of the DARPA
Grand Challenge. Here the vehicle moves from thepavement to grass, both of which are drivable. The
sequence in Figure 16 illustrates the adaptation atwork: The boxed areas toward the bottom of the image are the training region, and the red coloring in theimage is the result of applying the learned classifier.
As is easily seen in Figure 16, the vision module successfully adapts from pavement to grass within lessthan 1 s, while still correctly labeling the hay bales
and other obstacles.
Under slowly changing lighting conditions, thesystem adapts more slowly to the road surface, making extensive use of past images in classification. Thisis illustrated in the bottom row of Figure 17, whichshows results for a sequence of images acquired at theBeer Bottle pass, the most difficult passage in the 2005
Race. Here, most of the terrain has a similar visual appearance. The vision module, however, still competently segments the road. Such a result is only possible because the system balances the use of past
images with its ability to adapt to new camera
images.

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Figure 16. These images illustrate the rapid adaptation of Stanley’s computer vision routines. When the laser predominately screens the paved surface, the grass is not classified as drivable. As Stanley moves into the grass area, theclassification changes. This sequence of images also illustrates why the vision result should not be used for steering
decisions, in that the grass area is clearly drivable, yet Stanley is unable to detect this from a distance.

Once a camera image has been classified, it ismapped into an overhead map, similar to the 2D map
generated by the laser. We already encountered sucha map in Figure 14共b兲, which depicted the map of astraight road. Since certain color changes are naturaleven on flat terrain, the vision map is not used forsteering control. Instead, it is used exclusively for velocity control. When no drivable corridor is detected
within a range of 40 m, the robot simply slows down
to 25 mph, at which point the laser range is sufficientfor safe navigation. In other words, the vision analysis serves as an early warning system for obstacles beyond the range of the laser sensors.
In developing the vision routines, the researchteam investigated a number of different learning algorithms. One of the primary alternatives to the generative mixture of the Gaussian method was a discriminative method, which uses boosting anddecision stumps for classification 共Davies & Lienhart,
2006兲. This method relies on examples of nondrivable

Figure 17. Processed camera images in flat and mountainous terrain 共Beer Bottle Pass兲.
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Thrun et al.: Stanley: The Robot that Won • 677

Table II. Road detection rate for the two primary machine learning methods, broken down into different ranges. The
comparison yields no conclusive winner.
Flat desert roads
Drivable terrain detection rate
共m兲

Mountain roads

Discriminative
training 共%兲

Generative
training 共%兲

Discriminative
training 共%兲

Generative
training 共%兲

10–20
20–35
35–50
50+

93.25
95.90
94.63
87.13

90.46
91.18
87.97
69.42

80.43
76.76
70.83
52.68

88.32
86.65
80.11
54.89

False positives, all ranges

3.44

3.70

0.50

2.60

terrain, which were extracted using an algorithm
similar to the one for finding a drivable quadrilateral.
A performance evaluation, carried out using independent test data gathered on the 2004 Race Course,
led to inconclusive results. Table II shows the classification accuracy for both methods; for flat desert
roads and mountain roads. The generative mixture ofGaussian methods was finally chosen because it does
not require training examples of nondrivable terrain,
which can be difficult to obtain in flat open lakebeds.

7.

ROAD PROPERTY ESTIMATION

7.1.

Road Boundary

One way to avoid obstacles is to detect them anddrive around them. This is the primary function of
the laser mapper. Another effective method is todrive in such a way that minimizes the a priorichances of encountering an obstacle. This is possible
because obstacles are rarely uniformly distributed in
the world. On desert roads, obstacles–such as rocks,
brush, and fence posts–exist most often along thesides of the road. By simply driving down the
middle of the road, most obstacles on desert roads
can be avoided without ever detecting them!
One of the most beneficial components of Stanley’s navigation routines, thus, is a method for staying near the center of the road. To find the road center, Stanley uses probabilistic low-pass filters todetermine both road sides based using the laser
map. The idea is simple; In expectation, the roadsides are parallel to the RDDF. However, the exact
lateral offset of the road boundary to the RDDF center is unknown and varies over time. Stanley’s lowJournal of Field Robotics DOI 10.1002/rob

pass filters are implemented as one-dimensional
Kalman filters 共KFs兲. The state of each filter is thelateral distance between the road boundary and thecenter of the RDDF. The KFs search for possible obstacles along a discrete search pattern orthogonal to
the RDDF, as shown in Figure 18共a兲. The largest freeoffset is the “observation” to the KF, in that it establishes the local measurement of the road boundary.
So, if multiple parallel roads exist in Stanley’s fieldof view, separated by a small berm, the filter will
only trace the innermost drivable area.
By virtue of KF integration, the road boundaries
change slowly. As a result, small obstacles—or momentary situations without side obstacles—affect theroad boundary estimation only minimally; however,
persistent obstacles that occur over an extended period of time do have a strong effect.
Based on the output of these filters, Stanley defines the road to be the center of the two boundaries.
The road center’s lateral offset is a component inscoring trajectories during path planning, as will be
discussed further below. In the absence of other contingencies, Stanley slowly converges to the estimated road center. Empirically, we found that thisdriving technique stays clear of the vast majority ofnatural obstacles on desert roads. While road centering is clearly only a heuristic, we found it to behighly effective in extensive desert tests.
Figure 18共b兲 shows an example result of the road
estimator. The blue corridor shown there is Stanley’s
best estimate of the road. Notice that the corridor isconfined by two small berms, which are both detected by the laser mapper. This module plays animportant role in Stanley’s ability to negotiate desert
roads.

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Figure 18. 共a兲 Search regions for the road detection module: The occurrence of obstacles is determined along a sequenceof lines parallel to the RDDF; and 共b兲 the result of the road estimator is shown in blue, behind the vehicle. Notice that theroad is bounded by two small berms.

7.2.

Terrain Ruggedness

In addition to avoiding obstacles and staying
centered along the road, another important component of safe driving is choosing an appropriate velocity 共Iagnemma & Dubowsky, 2004兲. Intuitively
speaking, desert terrain varies from flat and smoothto steep and rugged. The type of the terrain plays animportant role in determining the maximum safe velocity of the vehicle. On steep terrain, driving too
fast may lead to fishtailing or sliding. On rugged
terrain, excessive speeds may lead to extreme shocks
that can damage or destroy the robot. Thus, sensing
the terrain type is essential for the safety of the vehicle. In order to address these two situations, Stanley’s velocity controller constantly estimates terrain
slope and ruggedness and uses these values to set
intelligent maximum speeds.
The terrain slope is taken directly from the vehicle’s pitch estimate, as computed by the UKF. Borrowing from Brooks & Iagnemma 共2005兲, the terrain
ruggedness is measured using the vehicle’s z accelerometer. The vertical acceleration is band-pass filtered to remove the effect of gravity and vehicle vibration, while leaving the oscillations in the range ofthe vehicle’s resonant frequency. The amplitude of
the resulting signal is a measurement of the verticalshock experienced by the vehicle due to excitationby the terrain. Empirically, this filtered acceleration
appears to vary linearly with velocity. 共see Figure
19兲. In other words, doubling the maximum speed of
the vehicle over a section of terrain will approximately double the maximum differential acceleration imparted on the vehicle. In Sec. 9.1, this relationship will be used to derive a simple rule forsetting maximum velocity to approximately boundthe maximum shock imparted on the vehicle.

8.

PATH PLANNING

As was previously noted, the RDDF file provided by
DARPA largely eliminates the need for any global
path planning. Thus, the role of Stanley’s path planner is primarily local obstacle avoidance. Instead ofplanning in the global coordinate frame, Stanley’s
path planner was formulated in a unique coordinate
system: Perpendicular distance, or “lateral offset” toa fixed base trajectory. Varying the lateral offset
moves Stanley left and right with respect to the basetrajectory, much like a car changes lanes on a highway. By intelligently changing the lateral offset, Stanley can avoid obstacles at high speeds while making
fast progress along the course.
Journal of Field Robotics DOI 10.1002/rob

Thrun et al.: Stanley: The Robot that Won • 679•

Figure 19. The relationship between velocity and imparted acceleration from driving over a fixed-sized obstacle at varying speeds. The plot shows two distinct reactions to the obstacle; one up and one down. While thisrelation is ultimately nonlinear, it is well modeled by alinear function within the range relevant for desert
driving.

Stanley’s base trajectory is computed before therace in a four-stage procedure.
1.

2.
The base trajectory that defines lateral offset issimply a smoothed version of the skeleton of the
RDDF corridor. It is important to note that this basetrajectory is not meant to be an optimal trajectory in
any sense; it serves as a baseline coordinate systemupon which obstacle avoidance maneuvers are continuously layered. The following two sections will
describe the two parts to Stanley’s path planning software: The path smoother that generates the base trajectory before the race, and the online path planner
which is constantly adjusting Stanley’s trajectory.

8.1.

Path Smoothing

Any path can be used as a base trajectory for planning in lateral offset space. However, certain qualities of base trajectories will improve overall performance.

• Smoothness. The RDDF is a coarse description of the race corridor and contains many
sharp turns. Blindly trying to follow the
RDDF waypoints would result in both significant overshoot and high lateral accelerations, both of which could adversely affect
Journal of Field Robotics DOI 10.1002/rob

vehicle safety. Using a base trajectory that issmoother than the original RDDF will allow
Stanley to travel faster in turns and follow theintended course with higher accuracy.
Matched curvature. While the RDDF corridor is parallel to the road in expectation, thecurvature of the road is poorly predicted by
the RDDF file in turns, again due to the finite
number of waypoints. By default, Stanley
will prefer to drive parallel to the base trajectory, so picking a trajectory that exhibits curvature that better matches the curvature of
the underlying desert roads will result in
fewer changes in lateral offset. This will also
result in smoother, faster driving.

First, points are added to the RDDF in proportion to the local curvature 关see Figure
20共a兲兴.
The coordinates of all points in the upsampled trajectory are then adjusted throughleast-squares optimization. Intuitively, thisoptimization adjusts each waypoint, so as tominimize the curvature of the path whilestaying as close as possible to the waypoints
in the original RDDF. The resulting trajectoryis still piece-wise linear, but it is significantly
smoother than the original RDDF.
Let x1 , . . . , xN be the waypoints of the base trajectory to be optimized. For each of thesepoints, we are given a corresponding point
along the original RDDF, which shall be denoted yi. The points x1 , . . . , xN are obtained byminimizing the following additive function:
argmin 兺 兩yi − xi兩2
x1,. . .,xNi

共xn+1 − xn兲 · 共xn − xn−1兲
兩xn+1 − xn兩兩xn − xn−1兩n− ␤兺+ 兺 fRDDF共xn兲,

共6兲nwhere 兩yi − xi兩2 is the quadratic distance between the waypoint xi and the corresponding
RDDF anchor point yi, and the index variable
i iterates over the set of points xi. Minimizing

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Figure 20. Smoothing of the RDDF: 共a兲 Adding additional points; 共b兲 the trajectory after smoothing 共shown in red兲; 共c兲 asmoothed trajectory with a more aggressive smoothing parameter. The smoothing process takes only 20 seconds for theentire 2005 course.

3.

4.

this quadratic distance for all points i ensuresthat the base trajectory stays close to theoriginal RDDF. The second expression in Eq.
共6兲 is a curvature term; It minimizes the angle
between two consecutive line segments in thebase trajectory by minimizing the dot product of the segment vectors. Its function is tosmooth the trajectory: The smaller the angle,
the smoother the trajectory. The scalar ␤
trades off these two objectives, and is a parameter in Stanley’s software. The function
fRDDF共xn兲 is a differentiable barrier functionthat goes to infinity as a point xn approaches the RDDF boundary, but is nearzero inside the corridor away from theboundary. As a result, the smoothed trajectory is always inside the valid RDDF corridor. The optimization is performed with afast version of conjugate gradient descent,which moves RDDF points freely in 2D
space.
The next step of the path smoother involves
cubic spline interpolation. The purpose ofthis step is to obtain a path that is differentiable. This path can then be resampled
efficiently.
The final step of path smoothing pertains tothe calculation of the speed limit attached toeach waypoint of the smooth trajectory.
Speed limits are the minimum of three quantities: 共1兲 The speed limit from corresponding
segment of the original RDDF, 共2兲 a speed
limit that arises from a bound on lateral acceleration, and 共3兲 a speed limit that arises

from a bounded deceleration constraint. The
lateral acceleration constraint forces the vehicle to slow down appropriately in turns.
When computing these limits, we bound thelateral acceleration of the vehicle to0.75 m/s2, in order to give the vehicle
enough maneuverability to safely avoid obstacles in curved segments of the course. The
bounded deceleration constraint forces thevehicle to slow down in anticipation of turns
and changes in DARPA speed limits.
Figure 20 illustrates the effect of smoothing on a shortsegment of the RDDF. Panel 共a兲 shows the RDDF andthe upsampled base trajectory before smoothing.
Panels 共b兲 and 共c兲 show the trajectory after smoothing
共in red兲, for different values of the parameter ␤. The
entire data preprocessing step is fully automated, andrequires only approximately 20 s of computation
time on a 1.4 GHz laptop, for the entire 2005 Race
Course. This base trajectory is transferred onto Stanley, and the software is ready to go. No further information about the environment or the race is provided
to the robot.
It is important to note that Stanley does not
modify the original RDDF file. The base trajectory is
only used as the coordinate system for obstacle
avoidance. When evaluating whether particular trajectories stay within the designated race course,
Stanley checks against the original RDDF file. In thisway, the preprocessing step does not affect the interpretation of the corridor constraint imposed by therules of the race.
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Thrun et al.: Stanley: The Robot that Won • 681

8.2.

Online Path Planning

Stanley’s online planning and control system is similar to the one described in Kelly & Stentz 共1998兲. The
online component of the path planner is responsiblefor determining the actual trajectory of the vehicle
during the race. The goal of the planner is to complete the course as fast as possible, while successfully avoiding obstacles and staying inside the
RDDF corridor. In the absence of obstacles, the planner will maintain a constant lateral offset from thebase trajectory. This results in driving a path parallelto the base trajectory, but possibly shifted left or
right. If an obstacle is encountered, Stanley will plana smooth change in lateral offset that avoids the obstacle and can be safely executed. Planning in lateral
offset space also has the advantage that it gracefully
handles GPS error. GPS error may systematicallyshift Stanley’s position estimate. The path planner
will simply adjust the lateral offset of the current
trajectory to recenter the robot in the road.
The path planner is implemented as a search algorithm that minimizes a linear combination of continuous cost functions, subject to a fixed vehicle
model. The vehicle model includes several kinematicand dynamic constraints including maximum lateral
acceleration 共to prevent fishtailing兲, maximum steering angle 共a joint limit兲, maximum steering rate
共maximum speed of the steering motor兲, and maximum deceleration. The cost functions penalize running over obstacles, leaving the RDDF corridor, andthe lateral offset from the current trajectory to thesensed center of the road surface. The soft constraints induce a ranking of admissible trajectories.
Stanley chooses the best such trajectory. In calculating the total path costs, unknown territory is treatedthe same as drivable surface, so that the vehicle does
not swerve around unmapped spots on the road, or
specular surfaces, such as puddles.
At every time step, the planner considers trajectories drawn from a 2D space of maneuvers. The
first dimension describes the amount of lateral offset
to be added to the current trajectory. This parameterallows Stanley to move left and right, while still
staying essentially parallel to the base trajectory. The
second dimension describes the rate at which Stanley will attempt to change to this lateral offset. The
lookahead distance is speed dependent and ranges
from 15 to 25 m. All candidate paths are run
through the vehicle model to ensure that obey thekinematic and dynamic vehicle constraints. RepeatJournal of Field Robotics DOI 10.1002/rob

edly layering these simple maneuvers on top of thebase trajectory can result in quite sophisticatedtrajectories.
The second parameter in the path search allows
the planner to control the urgency of obstacle avoidance. Discrete obstacles in the road, such as rocks orfence posts, often require the fastest possible change
in lateral offset. Paths that change lateral offset as
fast as possible without violating the lateral acceleration constraint are called swerves. Slow changes in
the positions of road boundaries require slow
smooth adjustment to the lateral offset. Trajectories
with the slowest possible change in lateral offset fora given planning horizon are called nudges. Swerves
and nudges span a spectrum of maneuvers appropriate for high-speed obstacle avoidance: Fastchanges for avoiding head on obstacles, and slow
changes for smoothly tracking the road center.
Swerves and nudges are illustrated in Figure 21. On
a straight road, the resulting trajectories are similar
to those of Ko & Simmons’s 共1998兲 lane curvature
method.
The path planner is executed at 10 Hz. The path
planner is ignorant to actual deviations from the vehicle and the desired path, since those are handled
by the low-level steering controller. The resulting
trajectory is therefore always continuous. Fastchanges in lateral offset 共swerves兲 will also include
braking in order to increase the amount of steering
the vehicle can do without violating the maximum
lateral acceleration constraint.
Figure 22 shows an example situation for thepath planner. Shown here is a situation taken fromBeer Bottle Pass, the most difficult passage of the2005 Grand Challenge. This image only illustrates
one of the two search parameters: The lateral offset.
It illustrates the process through which trajectories
are generated by gradually changing the lateral offset relative to the base trajectory. By using the basetrajectory as a reference, path planning can takeplace in a low-dimensional space, which we foundto be necessary for real-time performance.

9.

REAL-TIME CONTROL

Once the intended path of the vehicle has been determined by the path planner, the appropriate
throttle, brake, and steering commands necessary to

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Figure 21. Path planning in a 2D search space: 共a兲 Paths that change lateral offsets with the minimum possible lateral
acceleration 共for a fixed plan horizon兲; and 共b兲 the same for the maximum lateral acceleration. The former are called“nudges,” and the latter are called “swerves.”

achieve that path must be computed. This control
problem will be described in two parts: The velocity
controller and steering controller.
9.1.

Velocity Control

Multiple software modules have input into Stanley’s
velocity, most notably the path planner, the healthmonitor, the velocity recommender, and the lowlevel velocity controller. The low-level velocity controller translates velocity commands from the first
three modules into actual throttle and brake commands. The implemented velocity is always theminimum of the three recommended speeds. The
path planner will set a vehicle velocity based on thebase trajectory speed limits and any braking due to

Figure 22. Snapshots of the path planner as it processes the drivability map. Both snapshots show a map, the vehicle,
and the various nudges considered by the planner. The first snapshot stems from a straight road 共Mile 39.2 of the 2005
Race Course兲. Stanley is traveling 31.4 mph; and hence, can only slowly change lateral offsets due to the lateral acceleration constraint. The second example is taken from the most difficult part of the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, a mountainous area called Beer Bottle Pass. Both images show only nudges for clarity.
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Thrun et al.: Stanley: The Robot that Won • 683

Figure 23. Velocity profile of a human driver and of Stanley’s velocity controller in rugged terrain. Stanley identifies
controller parameters that match human driving. This plot compares human driving with Stanley’s control output.

swerves. The vehicle health monitor will lower the
maximum velocity due to certain preprogrammed
conditions, such as GPS blackouts or critical system
failures.
The velocity recommender module sets an appropriate maximum velocity based on estimated terrain slope and roughness. The terrain slope affects
the maximum velocity if the pitch of the vehicle exceeds 5°. Beyond 5° of slope, the maximum velocityof the vehicle is reduced linearly to values that, inthe extreme, restrict the vehicle’s velocity to 5 mph.
The terrain ruggedness is fed into a controller withhysteresis that controls the velocity setpoint to exploit the linear relationship between filtered verticalacceleration amplitude and velocity; see Sec. 7.2. If
rough terrain causes a vibration that exceeds the
maximum allowable threshold, the maximum velocity is reduced linearly such that continuing to encounter similar terrain would yield vibrations which
exactly meet the shock limit. Barring any further
shocks, the velocity limit is slowly increased linearlywith distance traveled.
This rule may appear odd, but it has great practical importance; it reduces the Stanley’s speed whenthe vehicle hits a rut. Obviously, the speed reduction
occurs after the rut is hit, not before. By slowly recovering speed, Stanley will approach nearby ruts at
a much lower speed. As a result, Stanley tends todrive slowly in areas with many ruts, and only returns to the base trajectory speed when no ruts havebeen encountered for a while. While this approach
does not avoid isolated ruts, we found it to be highly
effective in avoiding many shocks that would otherwise harm the vehicle. Driving over wavy terrain
can be just as hard on the vehicle as driving on ruts.
Journal of Field Robotics DOI 10.1002/rob

In bumpy terrain, slowing down also changes thefrequency at which the bumps pass, reducing theeffect of resonance.
The velocity recommender is characterized by
two parameters: The maximum allowable shock,and the linear recovery rate. Both are learned fromhuman driving. More specifically, by recording thevelocity profile of a human in rugged terrain, Stanley identifies The parameters that most closely
match the human driving profile. Figure 23 shows
the velocity profile of a human driver in a mountainous area of the 2004 Grand Challenge Course 共the
“Daggett Ridge”兲. It also shows the profile of Stanley’s controller for the same data set. Both profiles
tend to slow down in the same areas. Stanley’s profile, however, is different in two ways: The robot decelerates much faster than a person, and its recovery
is linear whereas the person’s recovery is nonlinear.
The fast acceleration is by design, to protect the vehicle from further impact.
Once the planner, velocity recommender, andhealth monitor have all submitted velocities, theminimum of these speeds is implemented by the velocity controller. The velocity controller treats thebrake cylinder pressure and throttle level as two opposing single-acting actuators that exert a longitudinal force on the car. This is a very close approximation for the brake system, and was found to be an
acceptable simplification of the throttle system. The
controller computes a single error metric, equal to aweighted sum of the velocity error and the integralof the velocity error. The relative weighting determines the trade-off between disturbance rejection
and overshoot. When the error metric is positive, thebrake system commands a brake cylinder pressure

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wheels match the global orientation of the trajectory.
This is illustrated in Figure 24. The angle ␺ in thisdiagram describes the orientation of the nearest pathsegment, measured relative to the vehicle’s own orientation. In the absence of any lateral errors, the control law points the front wheels parallel to the planner trajectory.
The basic steering angle control law is given by

Figure 24. Illustration of the steering controller. With
zero cross-track error, the basic implementation of thesteering controller steers the front wheels parallel to thepath. When cross-track error is perturbed from zero, it isnulled by commanding the steering according to a nonlinear feedback function.

proportional to the PI error metric; and when it isnegative, the throttle level is set proportional to thenegative of the PI error metric. By using the same PI
error metric for both actuators, the system is able to
avoid the chatter and dead bands associated with
opposing single-acting actuators. To realize the commanded brake pressure, the hysteretic brake actuator is controlled through saturated proportional
feedback on the brake pressure, as measured by the
Touareg, and reported through the CAN bus
interface.
9.2.

Steering Control

The steering controller accepts as input the trajectory
generated by the path planner, the UKF pose andvelocity estimate, and the measured steering wheel
angle. It outputs steering commands at a rate of
20 Hz. The function of this controller is to provide
closed-loop tracking of the desired vehicle path, as
determined by the path planner, on quickly varying
potentially rough terrain.
The key error metric is the cross-track error, x共t兲,
as shown in Figure 24, which measures the lateral
distance of the center of the vehicle’s front wheels
from the nearest point on the trajectory. The idea
now is to command the steering by a control lawthat yields an x共t兲 that converges to zero.
Stanley’s steering controller, at the core, is basedon a nonlinear feedback function of the cross-trackerror, for which exponential convergence can beshown. Denote the vehicle speed at time t by u共t兲. In
the error-free case, using this term, Stanley’s front

␦共t兲 = ␺共t兲 + arctan

kx共t兲
,
u共t兲

共7兲

where k is a gain parameter. The second term adjusts
the steering in 共nonlinear兲 proportion to the crosstrack error x共t兲: The larger this error, the stronger thesteering response toward the trajectory.
Using a linear bicycle model with infinite tire
stiffness and tight steering limitations 共see Gillespie,
1992兲 results in the following effect of the control
law:

冉 冊

ẋ共t兲 = − u共t兲sin arctan

kx共t兲
=
u共t兲

− kx共t兲冑 冉 冊kx共t兲 2
1+
u共t兲

,

共8兲
and hence for small cross track error,
x共t兲 ⬇ x共0兲exp − kt.

共9兲

Thus, the error converges exponentially to x共t兲 = 0.
The parameter k determines the rate of convergence.
As cross-track error increases, the effect of the arctanfunction is to turn the front wheels to point straight
toward the trajectory, yielding convergence limited
only by the speed of the vehicle. For any value of
x共t兲, the differential equation converges monotonically to zero. Figure 25 shows phase portrait diagrams for Stanley’s final controller in simulation, asa function of the error x共t兲 and the orientation ␺共t兲,
including the effect of steering input saturation.
These diagrams illustrate that the controller converges nicely for the full range attitudes and a wide
range of cross-track errors, in the example of two
different velocities.
This basic approach works well for lower
speeds, and a variant of it can even be used for reverse driving. However, it neglects several important effects. There is a discrete variable time delay in
Journal of Field Robotics DOI 10.1002/rob

Thrun et al.: Stanley: The Robot that Won • 685

Figure 25. Phase portrait for k = 1 at 10 and 40 m per second, respectively, for the basic controller, including the effect ofsteering input saturation.

the control loop, inertia in the steering column, andmore energy to dissipate as speed increases. These
effects are handled by simply damping the difference between steering command and the measured
steering wheel angle, including a term for yaw
damping. Finally, to compensate for the slip of theactual pneumatic tires, the vehicle is commanded tohave a steady-state yaw offset that is a nonlinear
function of the path curvature and the vehicle speed,
based on a bicycle vehicle model, with slip, that wascalibrated and verified in testing. These terms combine to stabilize the vehicle and drive the cross-trackerror to zero, when run on the physical vehicle. The
resulting controller has proven stable in testing on
terrain from pavement to deep off-road mud
puddles, and on trajectories with tight enough radiiof curvature to cause substantial slip. It typicallydemonstrates tracking error that is on the order ofthe estimation error of this system.

10. DEVELOPMENT PROCESS AND RACERESULTS

10.1.

Race Preparation

The race preparation took place at three different locations: Stanford University, the 2004 Grand Challenge Course between Barstow and Primm, and the
Journal of Field Robotics DOI 10.1002/rob

Sonoran Desert near Phoenix, AZ. In the weeks leading up to the race, the team permanently moved to
Arizona, where it enjoyed the hospitality of Volkswagen of America’s Arizona Proving Grounds. Figure 26 shows examples of hardware testing in extreme offroad terrain; these pictures were taken
while the vehicle was operated by a person.
In developing Stanley, the Stanford Racing Team
adhered to a tight development and testing schedule, with clear milestones along the way. Emphasis
was placed on early integration, so that an end-toend prototype was available nearly a year before therace. The system was tested periodically in desert
environments representative of the team’s expectation for the Grand Challenge race. In the months
leading up to the race, all software and hardware
modules were debugged and subsequently frozen.
The development of the system terminated wellahead of the race.
The primary measure of system capability was“MDBCF”—mean distance between catastrophic
failures. A catastrophic failure was defined as a condition under which a human driver had to intervene. Common failures involved software problems,such as the one shown in Figure 9; occasional failures were caused by the hardware, e.g., the vehicle
power system. In December 2004, the MDBCF wasapproximately 1 mile. It increased to 20 miles in July
2005. The last 418 miles before the National Qualification Event were free of failures; this included a

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Figure 26. Vehicle testing at the Volkswagen Arizona Proving Grounds, manual driving.

single 200-mile run over a cyclic testing course. At
that time, the system development was suspended,
Stanley’s lateral navigation accuracy was approximately 30 cm. The vehicle had logged more than
1,200 autonomous miles.
In preparing for this race, the team also tested
sensors that were not deployed in the final race.
Among them was an industrial strength stereo vision sensor with a 33 cm baseline. In early experiments, we found that the stereo system provided excellent results in the short range, but lagged behindthe laser system in accuracy. The decision not to use
stereo was simply based on the observation that it
added little to the laser system. A larger baselinemight have made the stereo more useful at longer
ranges, but was unfortunately not available.
The second sensor that was not used in the race
was the 24 GHz RADAR system. The RADAR uses a
linear frequency shift keying modulated 共LFMSK兲transmit wave form; it is normally used for adaptive
cruise control. After carefully tuning gains and acceptance thresholds of the sensor, the RADAR
proved highly effective in detecting large frontal obstacles such as abandoned vehicles in desert terrain.
Similar to the monovision system in Sec. 6, the RADAR was tasked to screen the road at a range beyond the laser sensors. If a potential obstacle was
detected, the system limits Stanley’s speed to
25 mph so that the lasers could detect the obstacle intime for collision avoidance.
While the RADAR system proved highly effective in testing, two reasons prevented its use in therace. The first reason was technical: During the
NQE, the USB driver of the receiving computer repeatedly caused trouble, sometimes stalling the receiving computer. The second reason was pragmatical. During the NQE, it became apparent that theprobability of encountering large frontal obstacles
was small in high-speed zones; and even if thoseexisted, the vision system would very likely detectthem. As a consequence, the team felt that the technical risks associated with the RADAR system outweighed its benefits, and made the decision not to
use RADAR in the race.

Figure 27. This map shows Stanley’s path. The thicknessof the trajectory indicates Stanley’s speed 共thicker means
faster兲. At the locations marked by the red “x”s, the raceorganizers paused Stanley because of the close proximityof CMU’s H1ghlander robot. At Mile 101.5, H1ghlander
was paused and Stanley passed. This location is marked
by a green “x”.
Journal of Field Robotics DOI 10.1002/rob

Thrun et al.: Stanley: The Robot that Won • 687

Figure 28. Passing CMU’s H1ghlander robot: The left column shows a sequence of camera images, the center column theprocessed images with obstacle information overlayed; and the right column, the 2D map derived from the processed
image. The vision routine detects H1ghlander as an obstacle at a 40 m range, approximately twice the range of the lasers.

10.2.

National Qualification Event

The NQE took place from September 27 to October 5on the California Speedway in Fontana, CA. Like
most competitive robots, Stanley qualified after four
test runs. From the 43 semifinalists, 11 completed the
Journal of Field Robotics DOI 10.1002/rob

course in the first run, 13 in the second run, 18 in thethird run, and 21 in the fourth run. Stanley’s times
were competitive, but not the fastest 共Run 1—10:38;
Run 2—9:12; Run 3—11:06; and Run 4—11:06兲. However, Stanley was the only vehicle that cleared all 50

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Figure 29. Laser model of CMU’s H1ghlander robot,
taken at Mile 101.5.

gates in every run, and avoided collisions with all of
the obstacles. This flawless performance earned
Stanley the number two starting position, behind
CMU’s H1ghlander robot and ahead of the slightly
faster Sandstorm robot, also by CMU.

10.3.

The Race

At approximately 4:10 am on October 8, 2005, theStanford Racing Team received the race data, which
consisted of 2,935 GPS-referenced coordinates, alongwith speed limits of up to 50 mph. Stanley started
the race at 6:35 am on October 8, 2005. The robot
immediately picked up speed and drove at or justbelow the speed limit. 3 h, 45 min, and 22 s into therace, at Mile 73.5, DARPA paused Stanley for the
first time, to give more space to CMU’s H1ghlander
robot, which had started five minutes ahead of Stanley. The first pause lasted 2 min 45 s. Stanley waspaused again only 5 min 40 s later, at Mile 74.9 共3 h,
53 min, and 47 s into the race兲. This time the pause
lasted 6 min 35 s, for a total pause time of 9 min
20 s. The locations of the pauses are shown in Figure
27. From this point on, Stanley repeatedly approached H1ghlander within a few hundred yards.
Even though Stanley was still behind H1ghlander, it
was leading the race.
5 h, 24 min, 45 s into the race, DARPA finallypaused H1ghlander and allowed Stanley to pass.
The passing happened a Mile 101.5; the location ismarked by a green circle in Figure 27. Figure 28
shows processed camera images of the passing process acquired by Stanley, and Figure 29 depicts a 3Dmodel of H1ghlander as it is being passed. Since
Stanley started in second pole position and finishedfirst, the top-seeded H1ghlander robot was the only
robot encountered by Stanley during the race.
As noted in the Introduction of this paper, Stanley finished first, at an unmatched finishing time of
6 h, 53 min, and 58 s. Its overall average velocity
was 19.1 mph. However, Stanley’s velocity varied
wildly during the race. Initially, the terrain was flatand the speed limits allowed for much higher
speeds. Stanley reached its top speed of 38.0 mph at
Mile 5.43, 13 min and 47 s into the race. Its maximum average velocity during the race was 24.8 mph,
which Stanley attained after 16 min and 56 s, at Mile
7.00. Speed limits then forced Stanley to slow down.
Between Mile 84.9 and 88.1, DARPA restricted the
maximum velocity to 10 mph. Shortly thereafter, atMile 90.6 and 4 h, 57 min, and 7 s into the race, Stanley attained its minimum average velocity of
18.3 mph. The total profile of velocities is shown in
Figure 30.
As explained in this paper, Stanley uses a number of strategies to determine the actual travel speed.
During 68.2% of the course, Stanley’s velocity was
limited as precalculated, by following the DARPA
speed limits or the maximum lateral acceleration
constraints in turns. For the remaining 31.8%, Stanley chose to slow down dynamically, as the result of
its sensor measurements. In 18.1%, the slow down
was the result of rugged or steep terrain. The vision
module caused Stanley to slow down to 25 mph for
13.1% of the total distance; however, without the vision module Stanley would have been forced to a
25 mph maximum speed, which would have resulted in a finishing time of approximately 7 h and5 min, possibly behind CMU’s Sandstorm robot. Finally, for 0.6% of the course, Stanley drove slower
because it was denied GPS readings. Figure 31 illustrates the effect of terrain ruggedness on the overall
velocity. The curve on the top illustrates the magnitude at which Stanley slowed down to accommodate
rugged terrain; the bottom diagram shows the altitude profile, as provided by DARPA. The terrain
ruggedness triggers mostly in mountainous terrain.
We believe that the ability to adapt the speed to theruggedness of the terrain was an essential ingredientin Stanley’s success.
Stanley also encountered some unexpected difficulties along the course. Early on in the race, Stanley’s laser data stream repeatedly stalled for durations of 300 to 1,100 ms. There were a total of 17
incidents, nearly all of which occurred between Mile
22 and Mile 35. The resulting inaccurate time stampJournal of Field Robotics DOI 10.1002/rob

Thrun et al.: Stanley: The Robot that Won • 689

Figure 30. Stanley’s cumulative velocity.

ing of the laser data led to the insertion of phantom
obstacles into the map. In four of those cases, thoseincidents resulted in a significant swerve. The twomost significant of these swerves are shown in Figure 32. Both of those swerves were quite noticeable.
In one case, Stanley even drove briefly on the berm
as shown in Figure 32共a兲; in the other, Stanley
Journal of Field Robotics DOI 10.1002/rob

swerved on an open lake bed without any obstacles,
as shown in Figure 32共b兲. At no point was the vehicle in jeopardy, as the berm that was traversed was
drivable. However, as a result of these errors, Stanley slowed down a number of times between Miles
22 and 35. Thus, the main effect of these incidents
was a loss of time early in the race. The data stream

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Figure 31. This diagram shows where the road conditions forced Stanley to slow down along the race course.
Slow down predominately occurred in the mountains.

stalling problem vanished entirely after Mile 37.85. It
only reoccurred once at Mile 120.66, without any visible change of the driving behavior.
During 4.7% of the Grand Challenge, the GPS
reported 60 cm error or more. Naturally, this number represents the unit’s own estimate, which may
not necessarily be accurate. However, this raises thequestion of how important online mapping and path
planning was in this race.
Stanley frequently moved away from the center
axis of the RDDF. On average, the lateral offset was±74 cm. The maximum lateral offset during the race
was 10.7 m, which was the result of the swerveshown in Figure 32共c兲. However, such incidents wererare, and in nearly all cases nonzero lateral offsets
were the results of obstacles in the robot’s path.
An example situation is depicted in Figure 33.
This figure shows raw laser data from the Beer
Bottle Pass, the most difficult section of the course.
An image of this pass is depicted in Figure 34共a兲. Of

Figure 33. Sensor image from the Beer Bottle Pass, themost difficult passage of the DARPA Grand Challenge.

interest is the map in Figure 34共b兲. Here the DARPAprovided corridor is marked by the two solid bluelines. This image illustrates that the berm on Stanley’s left reaches well into the corridor. Stanley
drives as far left as the corridor constraint allows.
Figure 35 shows a histogram of lateral offsets for theBeer Bottle Pass. On average, Stanley drove 66 cm tothe right of the center of the RDDF in this part of the

Figure 32. Problems during the race caused by a stalling of the laser data stream. In both cases, Stanley swerved around
phantom obstacles; at Mile 22.37 Stanley drove on the berm. None of these incidents led to a collision or an unsafe driving
situation during the race.
Journal of Field Robotics DOI 10.1002/rob

Thrun et al.: Stanley: The Robot that Won • 691

Figure 34. Image of the Beer Bottle pass, and snapshot of the map acquired by the robot. The two blue contours in themap mark the GPS corridor provided by DARPA, which aligns poorly with the map data. This analysis suggests that a
robot that followed the GPS via points blindly would likely have failed to traverse this narrow mountain pass.

race. We suspect that driving 66 cm further to theleft would have been fatal in many places. Thissheds light on the importance of Stanley’s ability toreact to the environment in driving. Simply following the GPS points would likely have prevented
Stanley from finishing this race.

11.

DISCUSSION

This paper provides a comprehensive survey of thewinning robot of the DARPA Grand Challenge. Stanley, developed by the Stanford Racing Team in collaboration with its primary supporters, relied on asoftware pipeline for processing sensor data and determining suitable steering, throttle, brake, and gear
shifting commands.
From a broad perspective, Stanley’s software mirrors common methodology in autonomous vehicle
control. However, many of the individual modules
relied on state-of-the-art artificial intelligence techniques. The pervasive use of machine learning, bothahead and during the race, made Stanley robust andprecise. We believe that those techniques, along withthe extensive testing that took place, contributed significantly to Stanley’s success in this race.
While the DARPA Grand Challenge was a milestone in the quest for self-driving cars, it left open anumber of important problems. Most importantamong those was the fact that the race environment
was static. Stanley is unable to navigate in traffic. For
autonomous cars to succeed, robots, such as Stanley,must be able to perceive and interact with moving
traffic. While a number of systems have shown impressive results 共Dickmanns et al., 1994; Hebert,
Thorpe & Stentz, 1997; Pomerleau & Jochem, 1996兲,further research is needed to achieve the level of reliability necessary for this demanding task. Even
within the domain of driving in static environments,
Stanley’s software can only handle limited types of
obstacles. For example, the present software would
be unable to distinguish tall grass from rocks, a research topic that has become highly popular in recent
years 共Dima & Hebert, 2005; Happold, Ollis &Johnson, 2006; Wellington, Courville & Stentz, 2005兲.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Figure 35. Histogram of lateral offsets on the beer bottle
pass. The horizontal units are in centimeters.
Journal of Field Robotics DOI 10.1002/rob

The Stanford Racing Team 共SRT兲 was sponsored byfour Primary Supporters: Volkswagen of America’s
Electronics Research Lab, Mohr Davidow Ventures,
Android, and Red Bull. The Primary Supporters, together with the Stanford team leaders, formed theSRT Steering Committee, which oversaw the SRT operations. The SRT also received support from Intel

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Research, Honeywell, Tyzx, Inc., and Coverity, Inc.
Generous financial contributions were made byDavid Cheriton, the Johnson Family, and Vint Cerf.
A huge number of individuals at Stanford, Volkswagen, and related facilities helped us in developing this robot, which is gratefully acknowledged.
The SRT also thanks DARPA for organizing thisgreat race and the many journalists who provided
press coverage. Our final gratitude goes to the manyfriends we made preparing for and during the event,and the many people who helped us and otherteams along the way.

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Journal of Field Robotics DOI 10.1002/rob