Daimler Chrysler 2006-04-10

Phone call from Prof. Barrat (sp?)

Present: Pietro, Richard

1. Intro
   • Proposal sparked some interest; wanted to know what Daimler Chrysler would have to do to be a sponsor
2. Background (Pietro)
   • DGC background
   • Teaching/research context
   • Would like instrumented cars. Thought of Daimler Chrysler and Toyota. Contacting them sequentially.
3. Discussion
   • Q: What would the timing be? A: DARPA had non-ideal timing. We were thinking end of summer.
   • Originally thought that we organized the DGC
   • Pietro described what we imagined
   • Custom versus stock vehicles; consider fairly advanced cars
   • Would like to see urban environment: traffic lights, etc. Structure like America's cup?
4. Daimler Chrysler's interests
   • Has relatively little information from Dr. Flick. Just two pager.
   • Q: do we want to do hardware research or software research? Feels like for students doing software research is more interesting. Hardware could be extremely expensive; does not seem that possible.
   • Don't have an A or B class vehicle in the US. Would need to get back to Mercedes Benz USA to figure out they think about it. Would need to talk to PR.
   • Giving a vehicle is not a problem. How much support is required and how to support from Stuttgart is the question
5. Next steps
   • Will talk to staff and get back to us
   • Pietro: Mettzler and Han. Dickmanns
   • Action (Pietro): Find out how much Volkswagen committed to Stanford