ARTs, IDEAs, ENGINEERing, NETWORKing

That was great!

ParkAssist enables automatic parking, using front and rear ultrasonic sensors to detect available parking space and a control unit to calculate the ideal manoeuvring path. Acoustic and visual displays guide the driver to the correct parking start position, then once reverse gear is selected the car parks itself in under 15 seconds. All the driver has to do in this time is accelerate and brake – the Touran does all the steering. The system has been available since June 2007.

The Electronics Research Laboratory (ERL)

Having been invited by Burkhard Hunke, Director of the ERL at the MIT European Career Fair (Rueckblick von Brainpower-Austria), I arrived in Palo Alto on Tuesday, in the early afternoon.

Besides driving the Touran I got to see the entire laboratory and pretty much met the entire team of the ERL. It was a great time! On Wednesday night, before driving to the airport, we went to an amazing steak restaurant on the 50th-something floor of a skyscraper with a view of the entire San Fransisco Bay, Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge - amazing! I didnt know that the bridge got its name in 1848 during the time of the big gold fever. At this time thousands of gold diggers came on their ships through the waters to the harbor of San Francisco. The gold fever brought much wealth and the name for the bridge was settled.

The ERL supports all brands within the Volkswagen Group. This includes Volkswagen, Skoda, Bentley, and Bugatti as well as Audi, Seat, and Lamborghini. In addition to working with research and development teams in Germany, the ERL also supports the development of U.S.-specific features at the Volkswagen of America headquarters in Auburn Hills, Michigan.

A great project coming from Stanford University and the ERL is the autonomous vehicle VW Touareg, called Stanley, which won the DARPA Grand Challenge and $2 million. Now it sparks inquiries from entrepreneurs and defense contractors. “Herbie, meet Stanley.”

It has been two weeks since I wrote my last blog, I cant believe it! The last week flew by! 4 days of last week almost seemed like one day!

Tuesday morning I flew to California, where I visited the Electronics Research Laboratory (ERL) from Volkswagen of America! There is a 3 hour time difference between Boston and California. The next day I spent the entire day at the lab and met with all project leaders and all engineers of the entire lab. The ERL and Palo Alto were great places to see! - more to come on that!

Wednesday night, I flew back to Boston on a so-called "Red-Eye" flight, departing at 11pm and arriving in Boston at 8am on

Thursday. This day also my 15 OLPC laptops arrived! They are amazing - again, more to come on that, as well! Same day, I packed all my things and flew to Austria at 7:45pm.

Gladly, I finally arrived in Graz on Friday, at 2pm, having spent the past two nights in planes instead of a bed.

Since then, time has flown again and today is already Tuesday and I am now in Eisenstadt, close to Vienna, where I met with INITS yesterday. Furthermore, I visited ICEP and listend to the talk by Damian von Stauffenberg von MicroRate zu "Kapitalmarkt und Mikrofinanz-Sektor - Trends, Chancen und Perspektiven fuer Kommerzbanken" - more on that, as well! ;_)

Other things to come:

I took another INvenTERVIEW, with David Merill, from the Media Lab, at MIT, who I collaborated with on his PhD thesis working on Siftables, throught this years i-teams class - soon to be posted on this blog! ;_)

Again, I got some cool links for you that I came across, over the past weeks:

Control your PC with your Voice
on the same topic: Use your Voice to Power Microsoft Word

Trying to sublet my apartment I came across the following:

20 Unusually Brilliant Bookcase and Bookshelf Designs
Apartment Therapy

Other:

A List Apart
Tag Galaxy
and for all of you, who like listening to OE3’s Fruehstueck bei mir and many more: Podster

PS:
The OST* featured a short paragraph about me and the 2fast4u exhibition in Hickory, North Carolina.
* TheOffice of Science & Technology (OST) is  "Building bridges of knowledge and expertise between Austria and North America" - this is the mission of the OST at the Embassy of Austria in Washington, DC. The OST is the strategic interface in the sciences, research, and research policy between Austria and North America.