🚀 go-pugleaf

I would heartily recommend Stanford University for someone interested in
robotics.  Someone already mentioned the Aero/Astro lab under Bob Cannon.
The CS robotics lab works together with the AA lab on some stuff, as well
as other projects.  Jean-Claude Latombe, Tom Binford, Oussama Khatib, Yoav
Shoham, and Nils Nilsson work on a range of topics from design of small
mobile robots and manipulators through motion planning up to geometric
reasoning and AI.  The lab has an exciting, dynamic environment, and we're
growing quickly.  We have quite a few students from MechEng, and cooperate
with groups in ME as well.  We also work with several groups from companies
here in Silicon Valley.

As for living conditions, the weather here can't be beat, San Francisco is
only a jaunt away, everyone is relaxed, and student housing is affordable
and very nice.  And your windsurfing or scuba diving class counts for 
academic credit!

Of course, I'm a little biased, being a PhD student at Stanford :-).  I just
ask you to consider it and maybe apply.

Randy "just a satisfied customer" Wilson