A robot car designed by a team at Stanford University has won the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) Grand Challenge, completing the demanding 131.2 mile course in fewer than eight hours. 

The team's car, nicknamed Stanley, finished the course in six hours 54 minutes, travelling at an average speed of 19 miles an hour, beating Carnegie Mellon University's vehicles into second and third place.

Four other vehicles, of the 23 which started the race, finished the course through the Mojave Desert, although not all managed it in the required 10 hours.

"It is incredible what Stanford and the two Carnegie Mellon teams did today, " said Darpa director Dr Tony Tether.

"When the Wright brothers flew their little plane, they proved it could be done. And just as aviation 'took off' after those achievements, so will the very exciting and promising robotics technologies displayed here today."

The result will come as a relief to Darpa after last year's race ended in a fiasco when no car made it more than eight miles.

This time fewer than half the teams made it 40 miles into the course.

The contest was set up to fulfil the US military's goal to have at least 30 per cent of its vehicles automated by 2015.