The results are in! Carnegie Mellon's Tartan Racing took the $2 million top prize, Stanford Racing—last year's winner—came in second for $1 million, and Virginia Tech rounded out the top three, pocketing $500,000.

It sounds platitudinous, but every one of the six teams that finished this year's course should be proud of their accomplishment. By situating the race in an urban environment crammed with buildings, four-way stops, and robotic and human traffic, DARPA forced the robot entrants to make a quantum leap in their ability to respond to the unexpected—a crucial skill if their self-driving descendants are ever to take to the streets.—Elizabeth Svoboda