Control Engineering

Paul Grayson

Friday Work Bee
March 14, 2008

Something old.

SOMETHING NEW
This week there has been an amazing amount of very interesting technology being talked about in the technical journals we subscribe to. The tech world seems to be catching the autonomous vehicle wave; there are now many stories about the various aspects of autonomous vehicles in the trade journals. One of the new sensors mentioned is SSI Technologies sonar tank level gage.

TANK LEVEL GAGE $95
While replacing a potentiometer and float with a sonar transducer and signal processor may sound like a move away from the simple to the complex, I am reminded that something as complex as a wrist watch retails for as little as $5.99 and is very simple in its electronic form. I just called SSI Technologies http://www.ssitechnologies.com/ to chat with them about their Fluid-Trac® sonar tank level gage that is "priced to compete with resistance tank level gages" - resistance tank level gages are what our truck AGV WENDY DARLING http://aimagic.org/html/agv_wendy_darling.html has in its fuel tanks now. The sonar tank level gage is said to be good for fuel tanks and is available in a two wire or three wire option. It is programmable for tank geometry and has averaging built in to handle fluid sloshing in mobile applications. The picture of it looks like the top of the resistance gages which are installed now, even looks like it has the same 5 hole mounting. Range is up to 24 inches in gasoline vapor, which is OK for our truck, which has 18" deep tanks. Resolution is 0.07 inches with an accuracy of +/- 0.125 inches. There is an averaging feature mobile application that compensates for when the fluid is sloshing. Operating Temperature range is -40°F to +185°F. The question now becomes do we repair the tank level gages we have or try out the new sonar gages.

IEEE
Darcy from IEEE Job Site http://careers.ieee.org/ called to chat about the “Volunteers Wanted” job posting that they are allowing us to run free for 30 days as a way of helping our team out. Try as I might I could not quite find the words needed to get Darcy to volunteer some of her spare time. There are many good reasons that she would want to be on the AIM Team, I just did not find the right one while we were talking on the phone.

NATIONAL INSTRUMENTS
A rep from http://ni.com called today to see how we were doing and if we had any questions. I asked him if he knew what we were doing with his company's LabVIEW 8.5 http://www.ni.com/labview85/ software. He did not, so I told him all about the project and that we are running the truck on LabVIEW. He thought that was very cool so I gave him links to information about the DARPA series of driverless truck races and the pile of videos on the web.

IEEE JOB REFERRAL
An e-mail from the first person to reply to our VOLUNTEERS NEEDED posting on the IEEE jobs site just landed in my in-box. His resume shows that he has an amazing background in automation and control. It will be interesting to see how he works out on the team. How many more people do you think will respond to the ad?

AIM TEAM BENEFITS
I just printed a rough version of the new AIM Team Benefits brochure. A copy is available at the RCTC website as Message #518 Mar. 8, 2008 Meeting Minutes, comments or suggestions are welcome.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/robotcluboftraversecitymi/

DOUG BURWELL
Doug put in his first full day today, from about 10:15 am to 7:30 pm. He spent the day discovering what the state of the driverless vehicle art is and what the DARPA's goals are. As a former GM engineer, he wanted to see our detailed plans, CAD drawings, and work break down (task list). He was disappointed to learn that we have eliminated most of the overhead costs of producing that sort of GM reference material by doing without it. When I explained that we are using a cut-and-fit approach and are limited to whatever becomes available he seemed able to to quickly switch into that mode of operation saying that he had worked on projects before that were organized that way.

JOIN THE FUN
Computer driven vehicles are going to be the largest single use of robotics in the world when they learn to drive themselves and go into production. Just think how many cars, busses, and trucks are produced each year and how fast those numbers will add up when they can be counted as robots. In 2000 world car production was 40,948,000 cars per year. http://www.geocities.com/MotorCity/Speedway/4939/carprod.html The number is going up each year as more countries reach a level of prosperity where their citizens can afford cars. All cars should come with enough HorseSense© that they refuse to run into things. The amount of software that this takes, fits on one CD ($0.34). The computer to run it is on board already to support the x-by-wire and engine controls that all carmakers are shifting to ($0.00). The price of the additional sensors needed has yet to be determined but could be very small considering the effects of Moore's Law.

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/blog/1180000318.html

Posted by Paul Grayson on March 14, 2008 | Comments (0)