Control Engineering

Paul Grayson

DARPA Urban Challenge to use California Rules
June 24, 2007

For the third in the series of races DARPA wanted to have the vehicles deal with urban traffic.  This would mean that the vehicles would have to obey the rules of the road but which state?  California rules were selected because their driver's manuals are available on the web and each team has access to them.  California also seemed to have one of the strictest set of rules so that if your experimental vehicle could be successful in California, it can be successful anywhere (Sung to the tune of New York, New York). California's two drivers manuals are available at http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/hdbk/driver_handbook_toc.htm  The 2007 California Driver Handbook is 95 pages and the 2007 California Commercial Driver Handbook is 144 pages.  The rules in these handbooks are in addition to the inch and a half of detailed rules published by DARPA.  While this might seem cumbersome, the combined documents are a detailed specification for what the finished machine should be capable of doing on its own. 

California is also large enough to be able to absorb the number of phone calls that authorities are getting from the teams about interpretation of the traffic laws.  A team asked one California State Trooper what to do if the road is blocked and there is a double yellow line?  The California State Trooper paused and then indicated that common sense is implied as part of the rules.  "You turn around".  There are thousands of small gems of wisdom that needed to be coded into hundreds of thousands of lines of code that it will take to digitalize the driving process. 

Linda Graham, one of AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL MAGIC's support staff suggested a fundraising method that we are trying.  She suggested that since we have created a fully functional automotive service facility to support our driverless vehicle AGV WENDY DARLING, that we use it to service and repair team member's cars and that the people using our service donate the money that they would have spent to have the work done elsewhere.   It is working so far.

Gary, the manager of Mulligan's pub and grill at the Crown Golf Club in Traverse City, MI http://www.golfthecrown.com/  suggested that based on the number of members we have on the AIM team that we use AIM as a buying club.  We have and the team members buy automotive parts, filters, oil etc. they normally would buy but do it through AIM.  This will build up the team's car parts volume so that when we buy something for the project we get a better discount.  I checked with one of our automotive parts suppliers and they said that they would be willing to sell us parts at their cost if we could show that we have a fleet of 100 or more vehicles, they make their money at the end of the year through a rebate they get from the parts manufacturers.    We have just started signing up people to be part of our Freedom Fleet of vehicles.  I have seven vehicles here at the shop.  Each team member has two or more vehicles they are driving or parked.  By registering their vehicles VIN number with us we can count their vehicle as part of the 100 or more vehicles we have to have in our service fleet to qualify as a "Master Parts Installer", the highest discount they offer anyone.  In turn Freedom Fleet members get to use the team discount on automotive parts they buy.    I will keep you posted.  Linda just signed up her three cars for the program and thinks that just amoung her friends at her church she will be able to sign up 100 cars. This might work, we will need 100 vehicles registered to find out.

I would like to hear your ideas on how to gather the money, manpower, and materials that it takes to operate an all-volunteer not-for-profit DoD project.  Send me an e-mail at pgrayson@aimagic.org and let me know what you think.

Posted by Paul Grayson on June 24, 2007 | Comments (0)