Control Engineering

Paul Grayson

More Map Info
December 19, 2007

MAPS ON BOARD
Imagine the 7 inch touch screen of the Pioneer AVIC-Z2,  that you may be familiar with, replaced with three 17 inch panel PC with multi-touch screen to give the truck a glass cockpit for when people must interact with the truck systems or drive it manually.  For the AIM technology demonstration vehicle we have found that the entire street network of the USA can be compressed to fit into 20 GB on a hard drive.  TeleAtlas is one of several digital mapmakers racing to finish the world road and trails network database so no matter what country the vehicle needs to operate in, the road and trail network is commercially available.  GIS mapping technology produces maps that integrate diverse types of data into layers of information — such as data acquired from vendors, government agencies, and from the vehicle's sensors.  

DATA DISPLAYED SPATIALLY
Digital maps simplify working with large amounts of data by arranging it into computer readable data base.   Geographic information systems (GIS), are a form of database program, where data contained in tables is displayed spatially  for people to interact with.   The most compact way to store a map is as a vector file.  The vectors are lines that start at a GPS point, have a direction, and a length.  A string of these taken together is a road.  Associated with each line are things like the posted speed for that segment, class of road that it is, and several other weighted scores that are used in the calculation when: determining routes.  Routes with features such as shortest distance to destination or shortest time to destination can be asked for.  These are further influenced by such things as expected or measured traffic on each segment of road, the number of turns etc.

NO DRIVER, NO TARGET
Automatic guided Army supply trucks will deny the enemy their easiest target - nineteen year old supply truck drivers.  Supply trucks follow predictable routes - from the supply center to where the troops are and back.  Supply trucks have no armor - each pound of armor is that much less cargo they can carry.  The most extreme example of this is an army tank, which is all armor and can not carry any cargo.  Jessica Lynch drove a water truck. Some estimates are that sixty percent of the cargo hauled for our troops in Iraq is water.  This is not a strategic war material that the enemy is trying to prevent the movement of, they are instead out to kill one soldier a day so that it is in the evening news each night as the American people are eating dinner.  They are under the impression that the will of the people can be worn down if it is constantly in the news.  US Army supply trucks were designed to operate in the "rear area" back in the days when there was a clearly defined front with a line between "our side" and "their side".  Those days of trench warfare are long gone.  The front is now everywhere.  Every American is the declared target of our new enemy, even those here at home.  Nearly the same number of people were killed in the 9/11/2001 attack on the US as were killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor 12/7/1941.   It is up to each of us on the home front to do what we can to defend the country against the people who have declared war on the USA.  For my contribution I am writing this column and working on solving the problems of driverless systems that the US Army needs.  I, and the AIM Team, are putting what we are learning into practice on our driverless technology demonstration truck, AGV WENDY DARLING.  It is a positive thing we are doing, great fun, for a good cause, and will save lives, perhaps our own.

DEFENSE FEATURES
Since it is a computer program that runs the navigation system of the truck the best advice of experts can be included as rules to follow.  Rules such as never take the same route twice, take a different route going out than coming back, weigh route choices by risk assessment of each road segment, and urgency of the cargo on board etc.  One main difference between spreadsheets and GIS software is the ability of  GIS to link the information from a table to a spatially accurate map of community districts, police precincts, neighborhoods, blocks, etc. Current intelligence information can be fed to the truck before it selects its own route.  Fleets of supply trucks operating can report back information about the current situation, such as shots fired, 360^o video of the entire route in real time for automated analysis etc. They can show their own locations in Blue.  For example, in Iraq, the approximately 1,000 supply trucks moving at any one time and the others being loaded and unloaded could be mobile sensors for BattleNet providing valuable information to G-2 in real time.  Trucks on the move could also report back to other trucks about blocked roads or traffic situations.

GO ROBOTS !

Posted by Paul Grayson on December 19, 2007 | Comments (0)