Control Engineering

Paul Grayson

AIM Racing Update
August 22, 2007

For a change of pace this year we exhibited at the Kalkaska County 4-H Fair.  Our booth was manned all week by the Friday support services crew of volunteers.  Since one day a week seems to fit most peoples schedules best, volunteers have been signing up for which day of the week they want to put their time in, working on the robot truck AGV WENDY DARLING or other robot stuff here in the AIM Team workshop.

The next animatronic figure to animate - by special request - is a plush Curious George monkey.  A bucket of steel rods has been donated to make the skeleton for Curious George and many of the other plush animals that are here at the shop waiting to be animated.  Several small motors have been donated over the past couple of weeks that might be useful for this.  There is a young girl waiting to see here favorite stuffed toy move on its own. 

The Monday group is working on updating our web page and send out our press releases to keep the media up to date on what we are doing.  Gene Crocker has recovered enough from his stroke to put in one day so far.  As you may know he has been one of our most regular team members putting in about four hours a day four days a week for the past three and a half  years.  For those of you who have not met him, he is the guy who actually soldered the GPS Satellites together that now orbit the earth.  Can you imagine it, his hand prints are circling the planet.  Ask him about this when you see him, he will be quick to clear up any errors in the story as I tell it.  In his military days he was the guy carrying a gun working on the cryptographic equipment on airplanes guarded by other armed guards.... you will have to ask him about the details of other stories.  It is great fun to discover where the people you meet on the AIM Team came from.

The crews on the other days of the week are busy modifying the truck.

The distant members are working on the vision system and other pieces of the software. National Instruments has just come out with version 8.5 of LabVIEW - this now makes it more useful when dealing with multiple processors and massive amounts of sensor data, which is what we are working with so this is a useful change for the AIM Team.

The writing I am doing for Control Engineering Magazine - the journal for automation engineers, is bringing in enough money that I will be able to buy one tire each month for our robot truck AGV WENDY DARLING or two rims.  We need seven rims and seven tires so as long as I can keep writing three columns a week, we should have tires and rims at this rate in ....  11 months.   The present tires and rims are 53 years old.  Newer tires and new style rims would be safer on the road and in the sketches give the truck the new modern - tough military appearance. 

New lower insurance ($80 per year) and license fees ($25 per year) have been found for the robot truck.  That will be less that we have to raise from the team's friends and supporters.  Compare those to what you are paying for your own car.  Last year the lowest insurance we could find was $850 and the lowest license fee was $550.  We are looking at 10% of what we paid in one case and 5% of what we paid in the other case.  Big savings.

The first gallon of paint ($30) in the trucks newest color "untamed desert" is sitting next to the truck in bay 6 waiting for someone to dip a paint roller or brush into it and start painting the truck desert colors.  Painting is going to progress from front to back.  Earlier approaches were less methodical and created some confusion about who was doing what among the painting volunteers.  This is a desert camouflage color, in very flat, non-reflective oil base. 

The check arrived today from Anne Grayson for the new Texas Bumpers that will improve safety of both the truck and the other people on the road.  The Texas bumpers bring the bumpers of the truck down to the height of cars bumpers so they will match up in a collision - if that were to ever happen.  We are following the safer European requirement for trucks to have them on the sides too.  This gives the truck an interesting - exotic look.  I will call Jacklin Steel tomorrow and have them form up the steel as soon as they can.

The meeting here at AIM today was about finding jobs for team members.  Finding team members better jobs than they already have and the commercial possibilities of the robot truck that we are working on might take some of the economic pressure off.  Not only have some team members accepted high paying jobs by our competitors but our truck and as many others like it that we can outfit have been offered jobs.  Perhaps this is more important than winning a prize?

This past week I have had several people tell me that they wanted to be on our team but since they didn't have an advanced degree were afraid that they didn't have any skills the team could use.  I have not found a snappy answer to that.  The answer needs to let them know we need helping hands without sounding desperate for help.  Perhaps I should ask them what they do and then say we need them to do some of that for the team.  One today was Gary, the head chef at Mulligan’s Restaurant at the Crown Golf Course here in Traverse City, MI.  Could you imagine what a monthly team picnic would be like if run by full fledged chef?  Yea, I think those team gatherings would be standing room only.

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 August 22, 2007 | Comments (0)