Background: The Stanford CDR and the VW AutoUni have negotiated a research agreement that resulted in a contract being signed in mid-March, following a visit and presentation by the AutoUni President Professor Dr. Walther Ch. Zimmerli in November, 2004. The AutoUni has now become a "platinum member" of the CDR for at least 18 months.
The primary AutoUni contact is Klaus Schaaf. As soon as the contract was signed, Larry Leifer, Klaus, and Charles Petrie had a telecon with Klaus to cover organizing this cooperation, and one of the points was to have this workshop on 22 April. The first installment of the supporting funds were transferred on 31 March and the project is being organized now on both sides.
A primary objective of this cooperation is to have Stanford professors, research staff, and students visit and work in Wolfsburg in order to augment the teaching staff there, and help the AutoUni achieve German accreditation as a research university that grants post-graduate degrees.
Cooperation Organization: The VW AutoUni has a project that is called "Age HMI". The collaboration includes a Stanford research project, called "Driver Assistance System HMI" (DAS HMI), centered on Professor Chris Gerdes' vehicle dynamics and drive-by-wire technologies. The idea is that driver controls can actively assist drivers, with different age-related characteristics, control the car more effectively. This research project serves two purposes over and above whatever technology results. In fact, it should be noted that while we expect novel results from the project that might be useful to VW R&D, the two other purposes are really primary for the AutoUni.
First, the project means that the AutoUni is participating in academic research, with Stanford, which helps accreditation. Second, the AutoUni is interested in design as a research activity: especially the improvement of distributed design and how it can be more customer oriented. This is exactly the research topic of Professor Larry Leifer, and the Stanford d-School. The Age HMI project will be the object of his research in this collaboration. This meta-project is as yet un-named but we might call it the Meta-AgeHMI Technology(MAT) project.
There are two other project components of this complex collaboration. One is that Charles Petrie will work with the AutoUni to develop a set of courses for the AutoUni "Emerging Technologies" course module, based upon his work and experience in several areas at Stanford The other is that the AutoUni will participate in the Fall quarter of ME310 with a remote team located at the AutoUni. This ME310 project will also support Prof. Leifer's MAT project.
Since one of the objectives is to have Stanford researchers visit the AutoUni, this workshop was intended not only to work out the project logistics, but also develop a visit plan for the rest of calendar year 2005. It should be noted that the AutoUni will also be sending a visiting researcher to the CDR, in order to work on the collaboration, starting in Fall of 2005.
Workshop Attendees:
VW AutoUni
Workshop Agenda:
11:45-12:15 - Lunch at the Stanford Faculty Club
12:30-13:30 - "
AutoUni Presentation" by Klaus
13:30-14:00 - "CardioCars" - Wendy
14:00-14:30 - "Design for Well-being" - Machiel
14:30-15:00 - General project discussion led by Larry
15:00-16:00 - "
ME310 CDR/AutoUni Collaboration" - Philipp
16:00-17:00 - AgeHMI Project Discussion - Chris and Josh
Kickoff Visit: The very first step in the collaboration is a week-long visit by Larry to Munich and Wolfsburg. This workshop confirmed the plan for Larry's visit. He will present a talk in the "What's Hot in Science " seminar series at the Audi Museum in Munich on 4 May. The talk will be on "design-thinking and the d.school @ Stanford". On 6 May, he will join Prof. Zimmerli and VW Board Chair Peter Hartz in a signing ceremony at the AutoStadt in Wolfsburg. (Press Announcement: Deutsch/ English ) On 7 May, Larry will join the 60th birthday celebration of Prof. Zimmerli with a talk titled "Innovation-Science and Design-Thinking, an Innovation-Duality?".
ME310 Project:The ME310 presentation by Philipp laid-out a project plan for ME310. It would appear that there is a lot of work to be done in Wolfsburg to get ready for this class. First, a basic IT infrastructure needs to be developed, including a server outside of the usual VW firewall, and IP-based teleconferencing capability, as well as the hardware to take advantage of the CDR collaboration software the AutoUni receives as part of the MAT project. Acquiring this infrastructure is Klaus' responsibility.
Philipp will visit the VW twice before the class starts in September to help the AutoUni organize for this class. From Klaus' feedback, it seems this class will not be suitable for VW employees taking classes on a part-time basis as it is very intensive. The AutoUni should only use Ph.D. students for ME310. And it may be that in the first iteration, the AutoUni will only want to copy ME310 "as is", rather than change it.
Philipp's excellent plan is laid out in his presentation. Again, it is Klaus' responsibility to prepare the AutoUni teachers and students, but Philipp is the CDR visiting advisor on what is required.
DAS HMI Project: The discussion of the this project with Klaus, Chris, and Josh centered around what car cockpit simulator CDR was going to purchase and exactly what work would be done. Klaus reports that VW R&D would like to consult with Chris about this.
One clear and near-term result is that we need a telecon scheduled between Chris Gerdes and VW, possibly a Hr. Kiss, on the simulator-based part of the DAS HMI project. We have a proposed date/time: 08:00 MON 9 May 05. Chris and Josh committed to sending a research plan - already here: (doc) (pdf). The issue is to reach agreement and/or understanding among the Stanford and VW researchers about what kind of simulator and research will be done here and the value of it to VW R&D.
We note here though that the primary value of this research project for the AutoUni is not delivering novel technology useful to the VW R&D section, as stated above in the background part of this report. Prof. Gerdes and his group have their own direction and the value of Stanford research will always be based upon local selection of research directions in any case.
MAT Project: Larry led an informal discussion of what can be done. The infrastructure development mentioned in the ME310 discussion is crucial for this project. There were two presentations for this project.
Wendy Ju is collaborating with Margie Morris of Intel on a project called "CardioCars". They're investigating how cars can become an vehicle for improving people's cardiovascular health, approaching this work from the perspective of Embedded Assessment, looking at how technology within people's day to day environments can help to monitor people's health status, to provide intervention to maintain health, and to compensate for health problems. Within the car, they are looking to sense physiological signals to track health status, and to investigate interaction issues associated with providing real-time intervention in the driving environment. This is clearly relevant to the AutoUni research.
Another presentation by Machiel Van der Loos was on the area called: "Design for Well-being",: Machiel explored possible areas of synergy with the AutoUni. Machiel talked briefly about the SleepSmart project supported currently by MediaX, since one of the goals is to place some of this sensor technology in car seats to measure vital signs (heart and breathing rate) unobtrusively.
Emerging Technologies Course Development: Charles is working with Klaus to develop a set of courses for the Emerging Technologies theme area - approximately 10 courses of three months each to be taught here in Silicon Valley if possible. The themes should cover all of science plus possibly how VCs recognize emerging technologies, or attempt to do so. These themes were discussed in the workshop but most of the planning for this was done by Charles and Klaus outside of the workshop in order to make room for other discussion since Charles and Klaus have frequent contact.
One item Larry brought up is that Stanford can offer a certificate of credit for attending a Stanford course, such as ME310. Klaus will determine if this is desirable/feasible for the AutoUni.
Charles is scheduled to meet with German accreditation representatives at the AutoUni on 13 June. It is not clear what is supposed to occur or what preparation is needed. Klaus has now organized a preparatory meeting for the 10th, but Charles' flight is already organized to leave on the 11th, and it is not clear whether he can change this because of other travel obligations for the CS department.
A major overall issue that came up in conjunction with the ME310 project but which applies to all of the AutoUni courses is the incentive for VW employees to take them. This has to do with the kind of students we will get and what can be reasonably expected of them. It is clear now that ME310 is not appropriate if they will not have much time away from work to concentrate on such coursework.
The courses in the Emerging Technologies module are intended to be taught largely over the Internet. Each course will be about 150 hours of instruction, and about 110 hours should be remote study. The final 40 hours of on-site personal instruction should be done in one concentrated final week. There should be approximately ten of these courses. Finding courses that are so Internet-based, and distributing the courses, will be a major challenge for the AutoUni. Charles will be recommending topic areas and helping with this. It may be that the Stanford Center for Professional Development can be contracted by the AutoUni for some of this courseware and content.
Visit & Event Plan - 2005: The final result of the workshop was to layout a plan of visits and events for the calendar year of 2005:
| Larry | 2-6 May |
| Philipp | 16-20 May |
| Charles | 13-16 Jun |
| Chris | 27-30 Jun |
| Philipp | 4-8 Jul |
| VW Urlaub | 24 Jul - 12 Aug |
| ME310 starts | 25 Sep |
| Paper Bicycle Project | 2-14 Oct |