Stanford School of Engineering, Stanford, CA Videos

Russ’s Holiday Episode Playlist
'Tis the season for Russ’s Curated Holiday Playlist. 🎁 The Future of Everything hosted by Russ Altman invites you to tune into a playlist of six episodes from our archive to accompany you through the holiday season. Whether you’re thinking about giving during this season, ways to improve your health, or you’re simply excited to revisit compelling conversations with people who are impacting the future, we hope you’ll find something thought-provoking in this playlist. You can find the full playlist in the show notes for this episode. We are grateful to our listeners for taking the time to tune-in this year and we look forward to returning in 2024 with more captivating discussions about the future of everything. Listen and subscribe to The Future of Everything wherever you get your podcasts, or watch video episodes on YouTube: youtu.be/5OU0kO_01dE

OpenCap: Sophisticated human biomechanics from smartphone video
Engineers at Stanford have developed an open-source motion-capture app – OpenCap – that’s able to analyze human movement and forces in the musculoskeletal system using just a pair of smartphones – at 1% of the cost. Computational musculoskeletal analysis can help identify movement patterns that increase an athlete’s risk of injury or optimize treatments for individuals with mobility-limiting conditions. But such analysis has typically demanded significant time, equipment, expertise, and high costs. "OpenCap democratizes human movement analysis," says Prof. Scott Delp. "We hope it can put these once-out-of-reach tools in more hands than ever before." OpenCap computes how key body points, like knees, hips, and shoulders, move in three-dimensional space. It then uses complex models of the human musculoskeletal system to determine how the skeleton is moving and what forces are being applied during movement. From there, it can calculate important biomechanical data such as joint angles or joint loads, and provides a rich characterization of how humans move. 🗞️: stanford.io/3StvPmH 🎥: Kurt Hickman

Bioengineering: Where life sciences and engineering meet
Bioengineering is where life sciences and engineering meet. In 2002, Stanford Bioengineering opened its doors and became the first department at the university to be jointly managed by two schools, the School of Engineering and the School of Medicine. Whether inventing transformative technologies that allow researchers to control brain cells with light, engineering new-age plants that can withstand climate change, or shaping profound new understandings of why life works — and, sometimes, why it doesn’t — the insights and innovations that come out of the Stanford Bioengineering benefit people everywhere, every day. In this video, bioengineers at Stanford take us through the last two decades of their research and teaching, and share their well-earned optimism for the future of the field. 🗞️: stanford.io/46Hb7Uy 🎥: Todd Holland

AI researchers at Stanford and Shanghai Qi Zhi Institute have developed a new vision-based algorithm that helps a quadruped robot — a “robodog” — leap, climb, crawl, and squeeze past physical barriers as never before. The key advance is that the robodog is autonomous. It has the unique ability to size up physical challenges, imagine, then execute, a broad range of agility skills based simply on the obstacles it sees before it. "Our robots have both vision and autonomy — the athletic intelligence to size up a challenge and to self-select and execute parkour skills based on the demands of the moment," explains Zipeng Fu, a doctoral candidate in Prof. Chelsea Finn’s lab. In this video, the robodog makes multiple attempts to overcome an obstacle, demonstrating its rapid learning process of pushing against the obstacle to ensure adequate run-up space for subsequent tries. 🗞️: Learn more about the team’s findings and watch many more videos of the "athletically intelligent" robodog in action: stanford.io/3PL5uh6 🎥: Shanghai Qi Zhi Institute/Stanford University

Designing to delight, the Moonshot Club delivers
"What if a couch was buzzing around campus and spreading some smiles?" 🛋️ So asked Jason Lin, ’25, and his friends of the Stanford Moonshot Club. A classic example of the creative and collaborative spirit that’s the heart of Stanford Engineering, the now-ubiquitous motorized couch is the result of students from a variety of academic backgrounds coming together to tinker and make a positive impact on the community. Come along for the ride in this video starring Stanford Moonshot Club, with special appearances by Dean Jennifer Widom, Provost Persis Drell, and Prof. Mehran Sahami. 🗞️: stanford.io/3ruHAxY 🎥: Todd Holland

Milwaukee native and Stanford engineer honors local teacher
"Milwaukee native and Stanford engineer honors local teacher," reads the headline on a recent news segment on Milwaukee ABC. In honor of Teacher Appreciation Week, we continue to highlight tributes from our Terman Scholars—Stanford Engineering’s top graduating seniors—to the teachers that guided them during the formative stages of their academic career. In this segment, Terman Award recipient Zach Teplin is joined by his high school English teacher, Mrs. Cicero, whom he credits with impacting how he thinks about learning, how he asks questions, and much more. Tune into the interview, and see a full list of this year’s Terman Award honorees: stanford.io/3LOpXiX

Fine manipulation tasks—such as tying a knot or slotting a battery or juggling a ping pong ball—are notoriously difficult for robots because they require precision, careful coordination of contact forces, and closed-loop visual feedback. Led by Professor Chelsea Finn and PhD student Tony Zhao, researchers have now introduced a system for fine-grained robotic manipulation that relies on low-cost hardware and imitation learning directly from real demonstrations. Notably, the imitation learning is strengthened by the team’s novel learning algorithm in which a robot is trained to predict actions in chunks, rather than one at a time. Read the team’s paper and watch many more demos: tonyzhaozh.github.io/aloha Videos courtesy of Tony Z. Zhao/Stanford AI Lab

1 million views! If you haven't already, tune into Coding Support with Chris Piech, assistant professor of computer science education, via WIRED: youtu.be/1yyRvyNQ5rQ

What’s the shortest piece of code that changed the world? What’s the meaning of the 404 error? Can coding be self-taught? Chris Piech, assistant professor of computer science education, enthusiastically answers these questions and more as part of WIRED's Tech Support series. At Stanford, Professor Piech teaches fundamental courses in computer science such as CS 106A: Programming Methodology and CS 109: Probability for Computer Scientists. Watch the full video: youtu.be/1yyRvyNQ5rQ

Chelsea Finn, assistant professor of computer science and electrical engineering, explains Moravec’s paradox—the observation that many things that are difficult to do for robots come easily to humans, and vice versa—as part of WIRED's 5 Levels of Difficulty series. Watch the full video: youtu.be/raHM3k-uR0E

Welcome to Alumnihood, 2022
What has defined your time here at Stanford? As commencement nears, graduating students of the School of Engineering reflect on their time on campus, revealing their sense of humor, gratitude, and ambition. Congratulations to the graduating class of 2022! #StanfordEngineering #StanfordEng2022 #Stanford2022

Stanford Engineering Class of 2020!

Stanford Engineering Class of 2020

The Stanford d.school

100 episodes of Stanford Engineering's "The Future of Everything" podcast and radio show.

FoE: Margaret Brandeau