Control Engineering

Paul Grayson

Team #19 Insight Racing
August 13, 2007

This evening I saw The Sixties: The Years That Shaped A Generation.  I was there.  I graduated from high school in 1968, which if you are a student of human wiring you realize means that many of my concerns and values took a permanent set during those turbulent years.  I was in the US Naval Reserve while studying EE at Purdue University on my way to a degree in Cybernetics when life took an interesting turn.  The spy ship Pueblo was captured and I was offered a paid scholarship to the US Navy's advanced engineering school to study nuclear engineering.  I volunteered during the Viet Nam War and served on atomic submarines involved in cold war operations for six years. 

Thinking back, perhaps this is why I have always taken on challenging Department of Defense projects like the DARPA Urban Challenge.  Leading a team of volunteers and coordinating the donations of many sponsors is my opportunity to do what I know how to do best - engineering, and by doing so, to make a difference by saving lives.  The goal for the DARPA Urban Challenge teams is to demonstrate that it can be done, that the technology exists to get a US Army supply truck to drive itself.  Once that has been accomplished someone will start making them for the US Army, perhaps many people will start making them for the US Army.  With the US Army needing 400,000 of them and the other armed services needing them too, it should not be long at all before the civilian trucking industry demands them for trucks on US roads and highways.  

Team #19 on my list of DARPA Urban Challenge teams is Insight Racing.  Their vehicle for the 2007 Urban Challenge is a Lotus Elise named "Lone Wolf" and while they didn't get one of the eleven one million dollar development grants, they have been selected as one of the 36 semi-finalist.  From the 36 semi-finalists 20 will be chosen to run in the Urban Challenge "Final Event" Nov. 3, 2007.  



Insight Racing's 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge vehicle - Lone Wolf is the latest in a series of vehicles that the team has been working on.  Lone Wolf incorporates many of the lessons learned from their participation in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge where they went the 12th farthest distance before breaking down.  What those are exactly, you will have to either figure it out from the pictures or wait until after the Nov. 3, 2007 race to find out.  With $3.5 million dollars at stake people can get very quiet, very fast.  Some teams who have patented this newly realized technology hope to make even larger amounts money as driverless systems go into production.

Since the vehicles for the DUC must operate in both the forward and reverse directions, teams need to make decisions about what resources they want to devote to operation in the reverse direction.  Here is a picture of Insight Racing's Lone Wolf from the back.



Going inside to take a look around, here is a view into the "drivers" compartment.  As you can see they have used a cogbelt very close to the steering wheel.  The quality of construction looks to be very good and solid.



Imagine, this is important defense research being done here.  You will have to excuse me now, it's my turn to take the cool blue Lotus for a spin around the track.

Posted by Paul Grayson on August 13, 2007 | Comments (0)