California travel log – Stanford University

Stanford University
In the 22 degree sun we take a short stroll around the campus before meeting our guide for today, David Sirkin. David works as a research engineer at the Center of Design Research (CDR). After the introductions were made we got a walkthrough of the esteemed D-School of Stanford. On our walk to the Design Lab we see some of the Non-Autonomous vehicles that have been used for interesting research, such as seeing the behavior of pedestrians when an Autonomous vehicle approaches them. Continuing on for our discussion session in the Design lab we meet Larry Leifer, the professor responsible for the lab. Our discussion included many topics around the idea of Design. This lab was focused on students interacting and solving real world problems. There are a total of four research labs similar to this in the CDR.

Our trip later continued to another department where we were introduced to Rachel Thomasson, a PhD student working in the Biomimetics & Dexterous Manipulation Lab (BDML). Her are of focus was on bio-inspired soft grippers. The lab was a very complete in the sense of product development, containing everything that was necessary to produce a working prototype. Both software and hardware were researched.

After this tour we went on to the General Stanford visitor tour for more about the history of the school.

The day ended with another visit to the Vehicle lab where we were introduced to a simulation setup for researching all matters about humans. With this our day ended and we went back to the Inn after some food.