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Embarrassing Use of Foreign Oil
Photo by http://www.thecarycompany.com
A barrel of oil, frequently mentioned in the news, is 42 US gallons. At $100 a barrel that $2.38 a gallon. On the spot market, when I was in the tanker business, we charged 10% of the delivered price as freight to take it from the oil terminal in Kuwait to the refinery in Uso Korea and hauled 2 million barrels each trip. That explains why some people are in the steamship business.
NATIONAL ENERGY INDEPENDENCE
Yesterday a news commentator on TV said that we buy oil from countries that don't like us and they use our money to fund the terrorist's war against us. His observation was that, ironically, we are funding both sides of the war. Personally I am embarrassed by my use of gasoline and would like to be using something else for fuel. I am in close contact with it each day as I fill up my snow blower's gas tank from a 5 gallon can and use up about half a tank clearing the AIM workshop's driveway and parking lot. When the season ends for the snow blower, I will be maintaining the engines on a fleet of lawn mowers that mow a golf course each day. It is mostly gasoline there too, just a few diesel engines, no alternative fuels yet. Filling up my automobile's gas tank is a little less personal in that I don't actually see the gasoline or how much of it is in the tank. Paying the total on the pump is takng a serious bight out of my household's budget each time I fill up. To think that I am giving up other things to buy gasoline which sends money to countries that are using it against us is both painful and troubling.
COMMUNITY WIND POWER
The newspaper says that my neighbors have poured the foundations for several power generating wind turbines, that the blades have been delivered to the sites and that they are waiting for spring to set them up. They are advertising for people willing to work that high in the air maintaining the mechanisms when they are put into operation.
CASE
CASE IH checked in both yesterday and again today to let me know that they will be forwarding some pictures of their agricultural equipment guidance system and to point out that they are the only OEM that offers factory installation of the self-steering system. They also said that their system is "color-blind" meaning that it can be installed on any agricultural equipment regardless of the brand's trademarked color.
There is an 18 mph speed limit built into the software and they have offered to take that out for my teams higher speed demonstration. For now I am thinking that we should go ahead and install the stock version and run our demonstrations at 18 mph - which is faster than the winning speed at the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge, and switch to higher speeds later as we establish its reliability at each step in speed. In the past research and development in robotics has typically operated at under 20 mph and we need to get up to highways speeds as soon as the vehicle can handle it.
Bridgestone L-315
It is time to be looking for tire sponsors again. I got an e-mail from Bridgestone-Firestone tire company and called them back. Chatted with Richard Thomas about BF sponsoring my teams driverless technology demonstration truck - AGV WENDY DARLING. These are his last two days there so he asked me to send him an e-mail outlining the program to see if they will supply cash, tires and rims. I have sent that in and will have to wait for it to circulate through the BF organization. They are excited about their new L315 on/off highway wide tire, which is about 17" wide with nearly 1" deep tread good up to 65 mph. Sounds like the kind of tire we could use, there is also a slightly different tire used for garbage trucks and logging that is a good on/off highway tire.
Tires on an autonomous vehicle are literarily where the rubber meets the road. What kind of tires, how the vehicle is loaded and what the tread pattern is has a lot to do with how the vehicle handles. For driverless trucks operating at highway speeds good tires are essential to making the driving problem as simple as possible for the computer to deal with. You want as much help from the tires as they can provide rather than having to fight them for control of the vehicle. The Non Directional Tread on the military tires that we have on our truck right now are a prime example. Running on a hard surface, like a paved road, without a chance to dig in, the tread design causes the truck to run on smooth rubber strip - which acts like a bald tire in its handling characteristics. Handling of Mil NDT tires is better off road, on ground where the grozers can dig in a little bit and grip.
2007 DARPA URBAN CHALLENGE
A vehicle feeling its way around the course.
Photo by AIM Team members Linda and Tom Graham
GO ROBOTS !
Paul F. Grayson - Chief Engineer
AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL MAGIC, LLC
Racing to build technology that saves soldier's lives.
390 4-Mile Rd. S.
Traverse City, MI 49686-8411
(231) 946-0187, (231) 883-4463 Cell
pgrayson@aimagic.org
http://aimagic.org
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/robotcluboftraversecitymi/
http://www.controleng.com/index.asp?layout=blog&blog_id=1180000318
Embarrassing Use of Foreign Oil
February 27, 2008
Photo by http://www.thecarycompany.com
A barrel of oil, frequently mentioned in the news, is 42 US gallons. At $100 a barrel that $2.38 a gallon. On the spot market, when I was in the tanker business, we charged 10% of the delivered price as freight to take it from the oil terminal in Kuwait to the refinery in Uso Korea and hauled 2 million barrels each trip. That explains why some people are in the steamship business.
NATIONAL ENERGY INDEPENDENCE
Yesterday a news commentator on TV said that we buy oil from countries that don't like us and they use our money to fund the terrorist's war against us. His observation was that, ironically, we are funding both sides of the war. Personally I am embarrassed by my use of gasoline and would like to be using something else for fuel. I am in close contact with it each day as I fill up my snow blower's gas tank from a 5 gallon can and use up about half a tank clearing the AIM workshop's driveway and parking lot. When the season ends for the snow blower, I will be maintaining the engines on a fleet of lawn mowers that mow a golf course each day. It is mostly gasoline there too, just a few diesel engines, no alternative fuels yet. Filling up my automobile's gas tank is a little less personal in that I don't actually see the gasoline or how much of it is in the tank. Paying the total on the pump is takng a serious bight out of my household's budget each time I fill up. To think that I am giving up other things to buy gasoline which sends money to countries that are using it against us is both painful and troubling.
COMMUNITY WIND POWER
The newspaper says that my neighbors have poured the foundations for several power generating wind turbines, that the blades have been delivered to the sites and that they are waiting for spring to set them up. They are advertising for people willing to work that high in the air maintaining the mechanisms when they are put into operation.
CASE
CASE IH checked in both yesterday and again today to let me know that they will be forwarding some pictures of their agricultural equipment guidance system and to point out that they are the only OEM that offers factory installation of the self-steering system. They also said that their system is "color-blind" meaning that it can be installed on any agricultural equipment regardless of the brand's trademarked color.
There is an 18 mph speed limit built into the software and they have offered to take that out for my teams higher speed demonstration. For now I am thinking that we should go ahead and install the stock version and run our demonstrations at 18 mph - which is faster than the winning speed at the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge, and switch to higher speeds later as we establish its reliability at each step in speed. In the past research and development in robotics has typically operated at under 20 mph and we need to get up to highways speeds as soon as the vehicle can handle it.
Bridgestone L-315
It is time to be looking for tire sponsors again. I got an e-mail from Bridgestone-Firestone tire company and called them back. Chatted with Richard Thomas about BF sponsoring my teams driverless technology demonstration truck - AGV WENDY DARLING. These are his last two days there so he asked me to send him an e-mail outlining the program to see if they will supply cash, tires and rims. I have sent that in and will have to wait for it to circulate through the BF organization. They are excited about their new L315 on/off highway wide tire, which is about 17" wide with nearly 1" deep tread good up to 65 mph. Sounds like the kind of tire we could use, there is also a slightly different tire used for garbage trucks and logging that is a good on/off highway tire.
Tires on an autonomous vehicle are literarily where the rubber meets the road. What kind of tires, how the vehicle is loaded and what the tread pattern is has a lot to do with how the vehicle handles. For driverless trucks operating at highway speeds good tires are essential to making the driving problem as simple as possible for the computer to deal with. You want as much help from the tires as they can provide rather than having to fight them for control of the vehicle. The Non Directional Tread on the military tires that we have on our truck right now are a prime example. Running on a hard surface, like a paved road, without a chance to dig in, the tread design causes the truck to run on smooth rubber strip - which acts like a bald tire in its handling characteristics. Handling of Mil NDT tires is better off road, on ground where the grozers can dig in a little bit and grip.
2007 DARPA URBAN CHALLENGE
A vehicle feeling its way around the course.
Photo by AIM Team members Linda and Tom Graham
GO ROBOTS !
Paul F. Grayson - Chief Engineer
AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL MAGIC, LLC
Racing to build technology that saves soldier's lives.
390 4-Mile Rd. S.
Traverse City, MI 49686-8411
(231) 946-0187, (231) 883-4463 Cell
pgrayson@aimagic.org
http://aimagic.org
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/robotcluboftraversecitymi/
http://www.controleng.com/index.asp?layout=blog&blog_id=1180000318
Posted by Paul Grayson on February 27, 2008 | Comments (0)
Industries: Machine Control
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