Control Engineering

Paul Grayson

Steering Kit
February 13, 2008

The New Holland IntelliSteer Auto Steering System kit.   

CONVERSION KIT
The people at the New Holland office told me about being sent out in the field to test drive tractors outfitted with their steering system - so that as office workers they could speak firsthand about their product when people like myself call to chat about it.  This is an interesting approach to job enrichment and as one of the people who called, it did add an element of authenticity to what they were telling me about the system.   While field testing their product was not an every day event for them, it left them with an enthusiasm for their product and what it can do that I don't think any employee training power point presentation would have.  An IntelliSteer package for agricultural machinery can either be a factory installed option or is available as kit to add on to existing equipment.   I have an older tractor here that is capable of high road speeds, new agricultural machinery is now speed limited to prevent people from driving them over 18 miles per hour.  The average speed of the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge's first place $2,000,000 cash prize was 14 mph.  With this as the first place winning speed, a team could have entered an agricultural tractor, as we had considered doing at one point, and done well.


This is the New Holland conversion kit to allow a computer to do the steering of agricultural machinery that has hydraulic power steering.  While people won't usually admit it or sometimes even realize it, they truly down deep think that it requires some kind of magic or alien technology from Roswell to take over the job that humans used to do.  This picture of ordinary hoses, fittings, and valve should demystify that myth.  When they see what we are working with here at the AIM Team shop, you can see the disappointment sweep across their face.  One government official was so flustered he demanded to know what we were automating our US Army supply truck with.  "Tractor parts.  Ag machinery drives itself these days." was my answer.  I handed him an oily steer cylinder from a Massey-Ferguson tractor to emphasize the point. The look of consternation on his face as he stood there silently, obviously reevaluating what he had been lead to believe up to that point.  No doubt he had been told, by established members of the Military-Industrial Complex, that it couldn't be done with anything less than high priced missile parts, which they build, and would have to be hugely expensive to both develop and sell.  Moments like this are great fun.  To see a person suddenly change, from being a skeptic to believing that it can be done, are magical.  As automation and control engineers you have probably seen this happen yourself and been considered magicians by those outside the profession.  

Arthur C. Clarke's three "laws" of prediction:
1.  When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2.  The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3.  Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.


Here is the control display in the vehicle showing the automatic guided vehicle moving along its GPS/IMU guide path.

“...the use of vegetable oils or engine fuels may seem insignificant today, but such oils may become, in the course of time, as important as petroleum...”  - Rudolf Diesel, 1912  

IVTT
I am at the Intelligent Vehicle Technology Transfer conference at NIST - the new name for the Bureau of Standards, just outside Washington DC in Gaithersburg MD.  I drove to the conference rather than fly to test out the NAV system and digital maps that I am considering using on the technology demonstration vehicle my team is building.  This trip would be a good opportunity to spend the travel money on testing, give me about 30 hours of drive time and 1,500 miles of actual use to evaluate what I want to change about it, and get me to the conference - achieving dual use of everything is important when operating on donations.  This trip I thought would allow me to slowly work up to the 5,552 mile publicity tour from Traverse City MI to Los Angeles CA and back that I plan to take my old US Army supply truck on.  People here at the conference are asking me if I plan to stay in Traverse City and just send the truck out to LA on its own (driverless).  The fact that they were serious implies great confidence in the technology.  

I will tell you more about the people I am meeting and the amazing projects they are involved in later posts.  There is a great deal of chaos to all of this and an element of gold prospecting or treasure hunting to it. 

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 13, 2008 | Comments (0)