The mechanical engineering students are creating an autonomous -- or
driverless -- car that they plan to race up and down the treacherous Pikes Peak
highway in the Rocky Mountains next year.

The vehicle is the latest creation of a Stanford team, funded in part by Volkswagen, that in recent years has won awards for speed and manoeuvrability in competitions among unmanned cars.

The students say programming a car to run by itself up a curving mountain road is more than simply an engineering exercise -- it's a way of creating and testing safety systems they hope one day will be used in all vehicles.

"If we can design a car that can autonomously go up Pikes Peak, we can design a car that can take over when a driver falls asleep," said
Kirstin Talvala, one of the students.