Control Engineering

Paul Grayson

Team #03 AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL MAGIC
July 2, 2007

Team #03 on my list is my own team, AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL MAGIC. The word MAGIC in the team's name refers to the high technology we deal with, as in the famous quote by Arthur C. Clarke: "Any sufficiently advanced technology  is indistinguishable from magic".  

Since we were asked to demonstrate that an Army supply truck can drive itself from the supply depot to where the troops are and back safely we bought an Army supply truck to automate.  We are experimenting with Radar, Sonar, Laser Range Finders, and a variety of cameras for Computer Vision.  The M215 Army truck is an easy to modify platform to mount these experiments on. 


Automatic Guided Vehicle AGV WENDY DARLING out back of the AIM Works setting up for a TV interview.


Embroidered AIM Team jacket patch. 

The software we are using is a combination of National Instruments LabView and and NeuroDimensions artificial neural network software which are industrial products.  Almost everything we are using is quite ordinary, what is unusual is how we hook it all together.  As each year passes, more and more of what we need for automating vehicles is becoming available on production vehicles.   

When I started working on this project, a little over 5 years ago, a GPS antenna was about the size of a small punch bowl.  Now the 12-satellite receiver antenna that we are using is just a little bit larger than my thumb. Automotive Radar was a rare or experimental thing, now it is in aftermarket parts catalogs and available factory installed on some vehicles.  Sonar is common on many models of automobile in the form of object warning bumpers both front and back also on the side to measure the size of available parking spaces in prep for automatic parallel parking.  Headlights and taillights could become range-finding devices.  The car builder's medallion on one make of car is the radar dome.  The car salesman was quite proud of that when I was at a car dealership recently inquiring about available technology.



This view of AGV WENDY DARLING in work bay 6 shows the original bumper and the new Texas Bumper under it.  Mounted down the vertical center line are one of four Preco Electronics amber diode strobes (one on each side) and the black square is one of six Preco PreView Radars and below that the updated yellow and black STI OptoShield OS3101 laser scanner - one of four.  Not visible in this shot is the REALLY LOUD noise maker required by DARPA.  In several revisions of the rules they have reduced the dB requirement, the ones provided to us by Preco Electroincs are selectable volume.

The Texas Bumpers are 3/8" steel, 18" high, 4" deep, mounted 12" off the ground.  These are commonly seen on the front of 18 wheelers on the highway and usually are highly chromed.  This style is intended to keep smaller vehicles from going under our truck.  We have chonsen to skip the chrome in favor of extending the Army Green paint scheme.


We are experimenting with dumb and smart cameras.  These are the smart ones made by IntelliVision and we have great hopes they will simplify the machine vision system.  The frame grabber is built into the camera and the cameras are about the size of a box of kitchen matches. 

Posted by Paul Grayson on July 2, 2007 | Comments (0)