Engineering students from Carnegie Mellon University in the US state of Pennsylvania won a two-million-dollar prize for being rated the top finisher in a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency "Urban Challenge" held Saturday.

In a race worthy of a science fiction film, Carnegie Mellon's "Tartan Racing Team" backed by automotive giant GM stuffed sensors, radar and other electronics into a Chevrolet Tahoe sport utility vehicle nicknamed "Boss."

"This competition has significantly advanced our understanding of what is needed to make driverless vehicles a reality," said GM vice president of research and development Larry Burns.

"Imagine being virtually chauffeured safely in your car while doing your e-mail, eating breakfast and watching the news. The technology in "Boss" is a stepping stone toward delivering this type of convenience."

Boss and five other driverless vehicles maneuvered themselves 100 km along mock city streets on a closed Southern California military base to a finish line within a mandated six-hour time limit.

In the only contest of its kind in the world, robotic entries were driven to the starting line by team members who then abandoned the vehicles, which set out on their own.

Competitors had to park, circle, and properly react to traffic while completing "missions" that DARPA said simulate tasks vehicles might perform on battlefields.

The only traffic accident during the event was a minor fender-bender between entries from Cornell University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Eleven robotic cars and trucks began the race, and an additional 40 cars driven by people joined them to simulate city traffic.

Boss crossed the finish line in second place behind "Junior," a Volkswagen Passat modified by a team from Stanford University in California.

Speed was just one of the criteria used to determine the overall winner. DARPA judges took into account how precisely vehicles negotiated the route and obeyed traffic regulations.

The two previous annual DARPA challenges held since the event was launched in 2004 were across open desert in the Western United States. No entries completed the race in 2004. A team from Stanford won the race last year.

This was the first time vehicles maneuvering completely by their own devices had to deal with city-style driving.

"The urban setting added considerable complexity to the conditions faced by the vehicles, and was significantly more difficult than the fixed desert courses," said Urban Challenge program manager Norman Whitaker.

Stanford's entry was awarded a second-place prize of one million dollars. Third place and a prize of 500,000 dollars went to a team from Virginia Tech, the scene of an April shooting spree that killed 33 people.

Vehicles that competed in the final event are designed to operate without anyone at the steering wheel or controlling them remotely.

The US military hopes to be the real winner at the Challenge by fostering technology enabling it to make a third of its vehicles robotic by 2015. The US Congress has sanctioned the goal.

The US Department of Defense believes using robotic vehicles devoid of people will save soldiers from being killed by roadside bombs or other attacks in urban battlefields.

Roadside bombs have killed hundreds of soldiers in Iraq since the US invaded that country in 2003.

GM stands to benefit by showing the US military its vehicles can be modified to meet the Pentagon's interests. GM produces Humvee trucks used by US soldiers.

Tartan Team sponsors include technology giants Google, Intel, and Hewlett Packard.

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