Control Engineering

Paul Grayson

The Calm Before The Race
November 2, 2007

NOTHING TO DO BUT WAIT - CHILL

Last minute changes to a working vehicle are not a good idea. You run the risk of breaking it. Drop something down into the engine by accident while working around it and it can be a whole days work to get it out.  With less than a day before the race you wouldn't want to risk missing the starting gun. 

Everyone finds something different to do while waiting for the next big evolution.  As is commonly said in the steamship business "there is only enough time left to panic."  For me, holding down the fort here at AIM HQ, things have gotten very quiet.  The business week has ended.  The next batch of communications with the business world will be received by them after the race is over and we all know how it turned out - so there is not much I can do until after the race. 

This is a good time for each of the teams to review their options and plan for the very different world it will be "after the race."

NATIONAL ENERGY INDEPENDENCE - YOU KNOW, LIKE BRAZIL

In prep for our shifting to our "after the race" mode, I have joined ACE, the American Coalition for Ethanol.  Many of my relatives are farming and have asked me to look into turning their crops into gasoline.  They asked me about this because of the price of gasoline and they knew I used to have a permit from the ATF to distill for fuel purposes.  As a marine engineer I have run distilling plants producing pure water from seawater at a rate of over 30,000 gallons a day.  Figure if gasoline is $3 a gallon and I was distilling something that could take its place, I would be bringing in $90,000 a day.  Not a bad gross income. I have spent a lot of time studying energy conversion and efficiencies.  The liquid fuel being converted to mechanical work is one part of our AIM's driverless truck project. 

I have been asked to estimate what it would cost to build a wind-farm for generating power here in Northwestern, MI.  A farmer tired of the constantly fluctuating crop prices wants to cash in on the power shortage and sell electrical power to the grid.  A study, being talked about in the news today, shows that MI will need at least 4 more large coal fired power plants very soon to meet Michigan's growing demand for electrical power.  Doing this estimate might generate the money needed to support our driverless truck project.

SHOW OFF YOUR SKILL SET WITH  A WORKING DEMO

We have started on another of our "after the race" projects - animatronic characters.  Many of the same skills, materials and software that run our truck can be used to create life-like machines who look like people.  These are great crowd pleasers at conventions, trade shows and fairs.  It is also a good demonstration of what the team members and RCTC Robot Club members can do.  Sort of a visual resume of their skills set.  Helping team members find good paying jobs has turned out to be one of the benefits of joining the AIM team.

Of course we are planning to finish our driverless truck AGV WENDY DARLING and get into the aftermarket conversion of vehicles to driverless operation.  We have so much time, money and energy invested in this truck that we need to finish it and send it on a publicity tour to recoup our expenses.

TO THE MOON

Other team leaders have told me that they are planning similar things to ours for "after the race" and of course CMU's Red Whitaker has already begun putting his team together to go to the moon and win the Google Prize.

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 November 2, 2007 | Comments (0)