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Team #35
Team #35 on my list is PHD. This team holds a special interest for me in that team leader Tim Chapman was for a while on AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL MAGIC along with a half dozen other residents of the Phoenix area. He decided that he would like to have his own team and created PHD.
PHD's vehicle is named LoMaNoH. Kind of looks like a chemical compound rather than a vehicles name. The web page I have for PHD is no longer working. This eather means that they have moved to a bigger and better web page or cancelled their web page. Which it is remains in doubt.
On my desk here is the Sept. 2004 issue of Diesel Progress, North American Edition. Pages 23 thru 28 have a nice story about Komatsu's AMT driverless system. Back when the DARPA series began I called the R & D Department of Komatsu and spoke to the head of vehicle automation and his assistant. They were curious about how I had gotten their number and what I knew about their Driverless Truck project which produced driverless trucks for an open pit mine in Brazil. Beyond that they had very little to say. I explained that I would like to license the use of their technology for my DARPA Grand Challenge vehicles and that we would be willing to share our developments with them but they were not interested.
Their driverless system uses many of the sensors that are now appearing on DARPA Urban Challenge vehicles. I heard that while I was out whitnessing the test of a 16 ton driverless Stryker vehicle - and nearly got run over - Another teams's leader was nearly run over by one of the 320 ton mining vehicles. These incedents were early in the program and much has changed since then. Computers have gotten faster, sensors have become less expensive, and the understanding of what makes a good driverless vehicle has improved.
What automatic mining trucks (AMT's) lacked in the 1990's was customers willing to buy them. This has all changed now that the Congress has become a customer for nearly one million driverless systems.
... more later
Team #35
October 15, 2007
Team #35 on my list is PHD. This team holds a special interest for me in that team leader Tim Chapman was for a while on AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL MAGIC along with a half dozen other residents of the Phoenix area. He decided that he would like to have his own team and created PHD.PHD's vehicle is named LoMaNoH. Kind of looks like a chemical compound rather than a vehicles name. The web page I have for PHD is no longer working. This eather means that they have moved to a bigger and better web page or cancelled their web page. Which it is remains in doubt.
On my desk here is the Sept. 2004 issue of Diesel Progress, North American Edition. Pages 23 thru 28 have a nice story about Komatsu's AMT driverless system. Back when the DARPA series began I called the R & D Department of Komatsu and spoke to the head of vehicle automation and his assistant. They were curious about how I had gotten their number and what I knew about their Driverless Truck project which produced driverless trucks for an open pit mine in Brazil. Beyond that they had very little to say. I explained that I would like to license the use of their technology for my DARPA Grand Challenge vehicles and that we would be willing to share our developments with them but they were not interested.
Their driverless system uses many of the sensors that are now appearing on DARPA Urban Challenge vehicles. I heard that while I was out whitnessing the test of a 16 ton driverless Stryker vehicle - and nearly got run over - Another teams's leader was nearly run over by one of the 320 ton mining vehicles. These incedents were early in the program and much has changed since then. Computers have gotten faster, sensors have become less expensive, and the understanding of what makes a good driverless vehicle has improved.
What automatic mining trucks (AMT's) lacked in the 1990's was customers willing to buy them. This has all changed now that the Congress has become a customer for nearly one million driverless systems.
... more later
Posted by Paul Grayson on October 15, 2007 | Comments (0)
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