Stanford racing teams to roll out cars for city ceremony on Tuesday, Feb. 28

Two School of Engineering teams will be honored by the city of Palo Alto in front of City Hall on Tuesday afternoon. Mayor Judy Kleinberg will preside over the outdoor ceremony recognizing the Stanford Racing Team, which created the robotic car "Stanley," and the Stanford Solar Car Project.

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. Computer science Associate Professor Sebastian Thrun, who led the team, will be in attendance Tuesday.

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.

The public is invited to attend the free event, which will be held in the plaza in front of City Hall from 4 to 5:15 p.m.—with a short ceremony at 4:30 p.m. Visitors will be able to get a close look at the two vehicles and find out more about the teams' experiences from their members. City Hall is located in downtown Palo Alto at 250 Hamilton Ave.

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

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