Engineers at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., needed a software tool to design their robotic car. They found a solution with source code analysis software from Coverity Inc. in San Francisco.
The Stanford workers were building an entry for the Grand Challenge, a race for unmanned ground vehicles sponsored by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Va.
Stanford’s entry-named Stanley-was a Volkswagen Touareg R5 sport utility vehicle controlled by a cluster of six onboard Intel Pentium M computers that processed information for five laser range finders, a radar system, monocular vision, global positioning system, and an inertial measurement system.
Stanford researchers used Coverity’s Prevent and Extend source code analysis products to eliminate software defects in six custom-made software modules: computer vision; inertial navigation; light detection And ranging sensor; planning and optimization; control; and reliability.
Engineers at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab (SAIL) found 68 defects, half in their custom applications and half in software libraries.
“Software defects were a major cause of failure for teams in the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge and we are working with Coverity to eliminate any defects in Stanley,” says Dr. Alex Aiken of the Stanford Computer Science Research Group. “We were able to identify and subsequently address software issues using Coverity’s technology that we were unable to find through manual testing. The Stanford Racing Team is very impressed with the results from Coverity.”
On Oct. 10, Stanford’s entry, Stanley, won the $2 million prize in the race, defeating 22 other finalists in a 131-miles race through the desert near Primm, Nev.
For more information about Coverity, see www.coverity.com.
