Control Engineering

Paul Grayson

Team #27 MEXICO
September 3, 2007

2007 DARPA Urban Challenge team #27 on my list is MEXICO.  They are from Puebla, Mexico and are interested in demonstrating to the world what they can do.  I am looking forward to seeing what their vehicle named ALTEAP can do and how it does it.

Team MEXICO is one of the several international teams preparing vehicles for the DARPA Urban Challenge.  Each team has at least one thing that no other team has and are hoping that their unique approach or gizmo will give them enough of an edge over the other teams to win millions of dollars.  Of coure these are the most closely held secrets of the teams. After the race has been run many of these inventions will show up as patents or in technical papers by the people who developed them.  

That should be at least 89 innovations (one for each team), although one of the teams reports they personally have 16 patents pending and plan to double that number before the Nov. race.  While moving forward in any new area of knowledge each problem you run into and solve is a patentable solution.  Patents of course are the province of lawers and it helps to be working for a large institution that has its own army of patent lawers.

The smaller teams who do not have the resources to go through the costly patent process and can not afford the lawyers it takes to enforce the patents are just working for the fun of solving challenging problems - and the bragging rights.  

Where is the robots head?
As race day grew closer the robot vehicles being prepared for the First DARPA Grand Challenge race had sprouted stalks in every direction with sensors on the ends of them - reminding me of potatoes that had been left in the bin too long.  Now that robotic vehicles have evolved six years since then, they have taken on a sleeker look and change appearance less from its production version.  This has lead to people in the crowd being disapointed.  Kids shout "where is the robots head?"  When tell them all the sensors are built in and feed a small computer in the spare tire well under the carpet they seem to loose interest in things robotic.

Some people connect the decline of interest in engineering to the streamlining of locomotives.  Early locomotives had all the works out there in plain sight.  An old locomotive engineer told me "Why, you could just look at it and figure out how it worked".  Later when the works of machinery were covered with bodywork to give them a streamlined appearance, how they worked was less obvious.

Perhaps this contest, the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge, will get the current crop of kids excited about engineering and specifically robotics as they get to see the early ugly duckling stages of automatic driving vehicles evolve.  The works on most of these vehicles are still plainly visible if you look closely and know what to look for.  (Hint: Adaptive Cruise Control radars are hidden behind the plastic vehicle medallion).  DARPA has published a lesson plan for school kids that ties in with the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge Race.  It is available on their website at http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/docs/darpa_lesson_plans.pdf

Current technology appears to be well within most control engineers reach and budget if you get the urge to automate your own vehicle.  Sort of like the Popular Mechanics home built projects - "you too can have a driverless car to take you to work, send on errands, and send the kids to school in - adapt the family car to driverless operation in a few easy steps...."

Posted by Paul Grayson on September 3, 2007 | Comments (0)