The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as DARPA, offered 3.5 million in prize money to the robot building teams who could build the safest and most precise autonomous robotic land vehicles. The 60 mile course set in an urban environment, had 50 ""traffic"" vehicles driven by stunt drivers, four-way intersections, blocked roads, sections of unmarked pavement, and other robots simultaneously running. The robots were also required to obey all the traffic laws of the State of California.

35 teams arrived to the qualifying event just prior to the Urban Challenge. There were 20 slots allotted to start in the Urban Challenge, but that was not the number to qualify. By the middle of the first mission of three, as vehicles began to drop from the running, there were rising doubts that any 'bot would finish.