Control Engineering

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Team #17 Highlander Racing
August 8, 2007

This afternoon I left my day job at the Crown Golf Club early so that I could call into the monthly DARPA conference call on my cell phone from my car the parking lot.  It is interesting to hear the voices of the people from the other teams.  Hearing what they sound like adds perspective - this race is really going to happen - and it will happen soon.  It is also sobering to realize that these very ordinary sounding voices have vast resources at their disposal such as the young sounding woman who is the rep. from General Motors compared to my more modest budget.

Johanna from STRATACOMM, the PR firm that represents DARPA, said that DARPA Director Dr. Tony Tether will announce which of the teams have been selected as semi-finalists on August 9, 2007, at DARPATech 2007 in Anaheim, CA.  Which was expected, the surprise was that he will also announce the location - well in advance of the published time line.  For those of you with high speed connections the announcement will be webcast live at 1045 PDT/1345 EDT. The URL for the webcast is http://www.visualwebcaster.com/event.asp?id=41666 and will be available for access at 1030 PDT/1330 EDT.

Team #17 on my list is Highlander Racing and their vehicle OPTIMUS.  While they did not get one of the million dollar development money grants from DARPA, they are making good progress. Good artwork go a long way toward saying what the team wants to say - here is their very strong looking team logo. 

As many of the other teams have done OPTIMUS has a generator mounted on the back.  This is usually done to make a surplus of power available as the design evolves.  One of the DARPA rules for this race says that no external fuel tanks will be allowed - for obvious reasons.  Other pictures show the vehicle without the generator.

Here is a good shot of the interior that will give you an idea of the teams design philosophy and workmanship. They have a very direct approach to creating the drive-by-wire environment that is needed for the computer to do the driving.

Being an experimental vehicle and being in a race are two things that may cause you to need a way to haul a damaged or broken down vehicle back to the shop.  Also the long trip to the West Coast from where ever you are may be unnecessary mile put on the vehicle so a nice toy hauler or transporter like Highlander Racing is using here is a good idea.  This style of hauler can pick up a non-working vehicle from the ground and carry it easily.

Posted by Paul Grayson on August 8, 2007 | Comments (0)