stanford

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) conducted its autonomous vehicle races, the Grand Challenge and the Urban Challenge, in 2005 and 2007, but Volkswagen is still researching the technology. A combined effort with Volkswagen's Electronics Research Laboratory (ERL), Stanford University's Dynamics Design Lab (SDDL), and Sun Microsystem's resulted in the autonomous Audi TTS. The group working on the car is considering a run up the 12.4-mile Pikes Peak Hill Climb course in 2010 to demonstrate the capabilities of its driverless technology.

This new robot car is based on a 2009 Audi TTS, the sport version … Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--While I'm sure that many of the people in the room were familiar with prediction markets, I wonder how many of them had ever seen an active one up close and personal before.

Providing that sense of deep immersion, of course, was exactly the point of an exercise run Monday during a session of Singularity University's executive program by Melanie Swan, a Silicon Valley hedge fund manager. Swan, the principal of MS Futures Group, had tasked small groups of students with coming up with world-changing product ideas and then simultaneously had the students vote in … Read more

If you're a person who would gladly relinquish the task of parking your car to a computer, there may be a Volkswagen in your future.

Last weekend, Volkswagen Group of America and Stanford University's School of Engineering hosted a dedication ceremony on the Stanford campus for the new Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Laboratory (VAIL) that included the "first ever" autonomous parking demonstration by a driverless car.

The car, a VW Passat called Junior, was developed jointly by VW and Stanford and is the same one that finished second in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. Driverless cars have … Read more

Facebook's executives have been saying for a long time that they believe they've built something that can make the world a better place. And now they've launched a hub for that, called "Peace on Facebook."

"Facebook is proud to play a part in promoting peace by building technology that helps people better understand each other," the site explains. "By enabling people from diverse backgrounds to easily connect and share their ideas, we can decrease world conflict in the short and long term."

It appears to be part of something launching from … Read more

A group of engineering students has developed a portable, low-cost Braille printer that lets the blind and visually impaired easily label objects that feel similar to the touch, like DVDs.

The 6dot Braille Labelmaker is cheaper and easier to use than other label makers, according to the students from MIT, the University of Toronto, and Stanford University. Still in development, it might cost as little as $200 when released, less than half the cost of some other Braille label makers.

Users push six keys on the ergonomic device--one for each of the dots that make up a Braille character--to emboss … Read more

Apple's Snow Leopard operating system, which hits the streets on Friday, has plenty of new technology--but one of its major new features will soon be available on Microsoft Windows, Linux, and other major platforms.

OpenCL, the Open Computing Language, was originally proposed by Apple to support parallel programming on GPUs. There are other GPU programming languages, such as Nvidia's CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) extensions for C and the Brook stream program language developed at Stanford University and included in Advanced Micro Devices' Stream Computing software development kit, but rather than choosing one of these languages, Apple chose to create a new standard … Read more

This post was updated on Monday, June 8, with Motwani's correct age, as well as the cause of death and names of surviving family members.

Condolences are pouring out over the Internet as news spreads that Rajeev Motwani, a Stanford University computer science professor and well-known Silicon Valley angel investor, was found dead in his backyard swimming pool Friday. He was 47.

Motwani, who friends say did not know how to swim, was a special adviser to Sequoia Capital and invested in companies including PayPal and Google. But he may have been best known for mentoring numerous Stanford graduate … Read more

Here's another offering from Boston Dynamics' zoomorphic line: the RiSE V3, a multi-legged, beaver-tailed robot that can skitter along the ground, shimmy up a pole, and then quietly cling there and stare at you.

The legs are powered by a pair of electric motors and equipped with small surgical needle micro-claws, which allow the unit to dig into and climb up textured, convex, cylindrical structures at a rate of 21 centimeters per second, or just under a half a mile an hour (PDF).

"RiSE V3 is the first general-purpose legged machine to achieve this vertical climbing speed," … Read more

Intel is celebrating its four-decade-long relationship with Stanford University by spotlighting the school's nexus with its top executives.

The Intel-Stanford tie famously began back in 1969 when Stanford electrical engineering alumnus Ted Hoff became Intel employee No. 12. Within two years, he had invented, along with Federico Faggin and Stan Mazor, Intel's flagship product: the microprocessor.

For more than four decades, the Stanford-Intel relationship has been behind the launch of some of Intel's flagship technologies and hundreds of the company's engineering careers. (Almost 1,000 Stanford alumni have worked at Intel and a Stanford University Web page marks this relationship.)

The retirement this month of Intel chairman and former CEO (1998-2005) Craig Barrett, highlights one of the most enduring ties. Barrett was a professor from 1965 until he joined Intel in 1974.

"Industry does a good job at the D part of R&D--but we rely on the tier-one research universities like Stanford on the R side," Barrett said in an interview published on Stanford University's Web site. Barrett cited marquee research at Stanford such as semiconductor device modeling and new packaging technologies.

Senior VP Pat Gelsinger is another Stanford graduate. "We've had great results from the collaboration," said Gelsinger--also quoted in the interview--who earned an masters of science degree in electrical engineering at Stanford in 1985. "In almost every area that Intel is doing work we can point to significant collaboration and research projects with Stanford." … Read more