Stanford Report, March 7, 2006

Creators of specialized vehicles honored by Palo Alto officials

Two School of Engineering teams were honored by the city of Palo Alto in front of City Hall on Tuesday afternoon. Mayor Judy Kleinberg presided over the ceremony, which recognized the Stanford Solar Car Project team and members of the Stanford Racing Team, who created the robotic car "Stanley."

Stanley, a modified Volkswagen Touareg, won the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Grand Challenge by driving autonomously across 131.6 miles of the Mojave Desert last fall. The team won the $2 million prize and now plans to build a vehicle that will be able to drive autonomously from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Sebastian Thrun, associate professor of computer science who led the team, also attended the Feb. 28 event.

The Stanford Solar Car Project team placed first in the Stock Class of the 2005 North American Solar Challenge. The team's sleek vehicle, Solstice, was the quickest in its class to traverse 2,500 miles from Austin, Texas, to Calgary, Canada.

To learn more, visit the Stanford Racing Team's website at http://www-cs.stanford.edu/group/roadrunner/. The website for the Stanford Solar Car Project is http://www.stanford.edu/group/solarcar/.