Co-Curricular Site Visits
Co-curricular site visits are designed to enhance the academic components and provide opportunities for students to engage directly with a wide range of research institutes, businesses, and other facilities and industries in the region, as well as to experience the American culture more fully and intentionally. All students will be required to participate.
Torc Robotics was founded as Torc Technologies in 2005 by a group of Virginia Tech students on a mission to carry on their collegiate work on autonomous vehicle software. “TORC” originally stood for Tele-Operated Robotics Controls, and the team focused on developing Level 4 autonomous technology.
Torc and Virginia Tech formed team VictorTango to compete in the DARPA Urban Challenge in 2007. Their car navigated many traffic scenarios without a driver in four hours and 36 minutes, finishing third. The DARPA Urban challenge is often cited as a launching point for the autonomous vehicle industry.
In 2017, Torc demonstrated its technology with Project Asimov in a cross-country journey from Washington D.C. to Washington state, becoming the first certified autonomous vehicle pilot test in Washington after the state introduced its 2017 Autonomous Vehicle Pilot Program. The trip concluded with a visit to Governor Terry McAuliffe at Virginia’s Executive Mansion, after completing 5,300 autonomous miles.
Today, Torc still mainly operates out of Blacksburg, VA, but they also now have locations in Alburquerque New Mexico, Austin Texas, Montreal and Quebec Canada, and Stuttgart Germany.
Volvo trucks is a world-leading truck manufacturer, committed to driving progress and shaping the future landscape of transport. Volvo provides total transport solutions and offer support to customers in more than 130 countries. The first Volvo truck rolled off the production lines in 1928, and in 2016 Volvo Trucks employed more than 52,000 people around the world. With global headquarters in Gothenburg Sweden, Volvo manufactures and assembles its trucks in eight wholly owned assembly plants and nine factories owned by local interests.[2] Volvo Trucks produces and sells over 190,000 units annually.[3]
The 1.6-million-square-foot New River Valley assembly plant, located on nearly 300 acres in Dublin, Virginia, is the largest Volvo truck manufacturing facility in the world. The plant is certified under the ISO 9001 quality, ISO 14001 environmental, and ISO 50001 energy standards. The New River Valley plant produces all Volvo trucks sold in North America, including the VNM, VNL, VNX, VHD and VAH models.
Nestled in the heart of Virginia’s Technology Corridor and adjacent to the Virginia Tech (VT) campus, the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center (VTCRC) is home to over 180 research, technology and support companies. Our 230-acre park is located in a beautiful mountain setting, with easy access to the metropolitan areas of northern Virginia and the nation’s capital. In collaboration with VT, VTCRC advances the research, educational, and technology transfer missions of the university. The VTCRC advances the research mission by helping to create research relationships between companies at the VTCRC and VT (e.g., a tenant company could sponsor research at VT as part of a SBIR (Small Business Innovative Research) contract).
The VTCRC advances the educational mission by working with faculty to identify student projects that can be done at the VTCRC (e.g., MBA students create business plans for VTCRC companies). And the VTCRC advances the technology transfer mission by having a program called VT KnowledgeWorks that helps to create companies based on VT-developed technology licensed by Virginia Tech Intellectual Properties, Inc.
Part of the Pamplin College of Business, the Apex Center for Entrepreneurs inspires and empowers students to turn their passion, purpose, and ideas into action.
The Apex Center for Entrepreneurs is named in recognition of a joint commitment of $5 million by four Virginia Tech alumni, Brian Callaghan, Ted Hanson, Edwin “Win” Sheridan, and Jeffrey Veatch. CIE’s namesake, Apex Systems, is the information technology staffing and services company that Callaghan, Sheridan, and Veatch founded in 1995, which Hanson joined as chief financial officer in 1998.