Control Engineering

Charlie Masi

Looking forward to a party in the desert on Nov. 2, 2007
April 26, 2007

Each month, we participate in a conference call with the DARPA Urban Challenge PR people at Stratacomm. This month's call just ended and, as usual, there were many interesting developments:

If you are planning to attend the race Nov. 3, 2007 remember it starts at dawn and that there will be a big party the night before with Bar-B-Q, band, dancing, sponsor hospitality trucks, and tents.The location of the competition and the list of semi-finalists will be announced Aug. 10, 2007. If you want to sponsor the race event contact DARPA at grandchallenge@darpa.mil.

Each of the teams was encouraged to exhibit or demonstrate their vehicles at available events such as the National Transportation Week May 13-19, 2007 in Michigan. Check with the individual teams to find out what events they plan to participate in.

Suddenly, a large number of the automotive business publications have taken a serious interest in the business impact the DARPA Urban Challenge is having on the auto industry. Even local automobile news reporters have become interested, so check the automotive news section of your local paper for latest developments in driverless vehicles.

The auto industry is following the airline industry's example of adding new layers of automation to improve safety, fuel economy, and reliability, and to reduce production costs. Nearly all of the innovations in new automobiles are based on electronics. Cars were mass-produced in 1920 with 0% electronics. Now, 87 years later, electronics make up about 20% of an automobile's cost. Within three years, by 2010, the percentage is expected be 40%: double what it is now. Most of this new electronic content will be familiar to automation and control engineers, so if you are looking for where the control industry is headed, it appears that vehicle automation is big business.

Reporters and families of sponsors have been getting the opportunity to be chauffeured around test courses in teams' automatic guided vehicles at local press events created to promote the challenge, and their team. Press and sponsor luncheons with presentation of the vehicle, a walk around followed by demo rides for press and sponsors was recommended to all teams, so contact the team near you to find out when their press party is. To find your local team , check the team location map linked to from the DARPA Urban Challenge "teams" page.

You probably have already seen the ads on TV for current models of cars with the Urban-Challenge-like features, or Oprah demonstrating the self-parking feature on her TV show. You might not, however, have seen the video clip of a driver demonstrating a self-parking system by stepping out of the car and letting it park itself. If you want to try your own self-parking demonstration at home on your kitchen table top, there's a video clip on YouTube of a self-parking vehicle built with Legos. Specifically, they used Legos Mindstorms.

In a surprising, turn of events, it appears that general public may benefit from the Urban Challenge even before the Department of Defense does. GM has announced that they will have a driverless car for sale in the 2008 model year. That means October of 2007-- a month before the Urban Challenge competition!

As expected in the lead up to any race, some of the 89 teams are making great progress refining the operation of their vehicles while others (including our team, AIM) have either quit or missed one of the many deadlines on the DARPA time line. Eventually there will only be three prize-winning teams. Who they will be and whether or not it will be this year remains in question. As they say, "there are no guarantees in racing" or R&D.

For AIM, the competition has never been about the prize money or contracts. It is about what we can learn from working on solving the problem and the lives that can be saved when the problem is solved. We have been gathering support from individuals who want to make a difference and are working on solving the problem at the fastest pace that these donations of money, manpower and materials allow. This is my sixth year working on solving the problems of running a team and working on the engineering question: "how do you make a US Army supply truck drive itself?"

Last night I dreamed I was with the US soldiers defending one city block of urban Baghdad when one of the supply trucks I am now working on showed up with the supplies they urgently needed. In my dream I was proud to have been behind making it possible for these US soldiers to get the supplies they needed without putting an Army driver's life at risk. Being an engineer, I also took to opportunity to take a close look at the truck - especially the areas that we have not finished yet - to see how we did it. I woke up early this morning and went out to my workshop with the plans of the truck I saw still clearly in mind.

Posted by Charlie Masi on April 26, 2007 | Comments (0)