Control Engineering

Paul Grayson

Team #07 Axion Racing
July 11, 2007

Team #07 on my list is Axion Racing.  This Westlake Village, California team is undoubtedly the most colorful of the 89 teams.

As was promised, you get to look over my shoulder as I work on the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge.  First I must warn you that racing is an over-the-top, hyperbole filled business.  If racing teams were selling stock they would be required to add massive amounts of disclaimers to everything they say. Since it is racing, all of that should be taken for granted.

My information comes from their website, correspondence with the team rep, my conversations with 46 year old Bill Kehaly (Key-hay-lee) team leader and conversations with some of his team mates over the past few years.

Starting with the obvious, the first thing you notice about this team is the Axion Racing Twins.  Axion Racing's vehicle, if you can focus on the background for a moment, is named SPIRIT.  I imagine that the Axion Racing Twins picture is already wallpaper on computers everywhere as people follow the progress of the teams preparing for this race.

Nobody said technical reports have to be boring. The Axion Racing Twins spice up a technically sound team. 

Bill has followed racing's tradition of having a hot looking car chick as a team mascot, but as is his way he has taken it a step farter by having twin car chicks as the Axion Racing team's spokespersons.  They are the first thing you see on their website and they did the technical presentation video for the DARPA officials in a technically sound yet car chick flirty way.    Check out Axion Racing's 2005 DARPA Site Visit Video it is a good introduction to their vehicle SPIRIT, which is being updated for the 2007 Urban Challenge.

When I first met Bill, he was in the business of adapting cars for handicapped drivers and thought that the drive by wire systems he installs was exactly what was needed for a computer to do the driving.  These commercially available controls are well adapted to the task, have a track record of being reliable and solve the drive-by-wire part of the problem.  Considering both the prize money and the market potential for AutoDrive vehicles, he hired about 15 people full time for the task of getting his team's vehicle ready for the DARPA series.  Bill has identified several niche markets that his version of the Maximum Homerdrive like system will be suitable for.  Since in racing the cost of fielding a vehicle is usually several times the amount of the prize money and there are only three prizes in this race, every team has to have a way to pay their bills that does not depend on prize money.

While each team has been searching for the formula for success, Axion Racing is one of the teams that have managed to discover the right combination.  While the general equation is known to be a mix of money, manpower, and materials getting it together in the right proportions and amounts is apparently a very difficult real-world problem to solve.  Not all teams have been able to do that.  Prototype systems are vastly expensive because they are one of a kind, their design and construction is labor intensive, lead times for parts are long and the parts themselves are very expensive in small quantities.  Team Axion has over a half million dollars invested in their vehicle and more yet to be add.  This is being done without any prize money from earlier races and without the million-dollar development grants that some of the other teams have gotten.  For manpower they have about 26 people on the team and an advisory board of 9 additional experts.  For materials the team is using a combination of things they have either bought, barrowed or built themselves.  Getting a prototype of any kind to work flawlessly on a specific day at a specific time is a nearly impossible task.  To prove reliability requires a long period of use and burn in after the last change is made.  This luxury is in direct conflict with SPIRIT being a prototype subject to constant modification and tweaking.  Team Axion's hardware and software appear to be doing the job.  The proof will be on Nov. 3, 2007 - race day.     

As with any experimental vehicle every published picture and every video of Axion Racing's DARPA Urban Challenge entry, SPIRIT, shows it in a different configuration of sensors and supports.  I think the two surfboards on top are a nice touch (they cover what would be uninteresting support structure for the sensor array).  A video of a recent version of the SPIRIT with computer-generated narration is interesting.   Probably the best description of the race I have heard so far is when the computer generated voice explains: "The primary objective of the Urban Challenge is to demonstrate safe, effective autonomous ground vehicle navigation over a 60 mile, 6 hour mission in urban traffic, while conforming to California state traffic laws and established traffic conventions."   Yes, that is the DUC in a nutshell.

Posted by Paul Grayson on July 11, 2007 | Comments (0)