High School Builds Electric Porsche; Virtual Reality Progress Rolling on;

Here is how they expect it to look after it gets a paint job.

EV CHALLENGE - West Las Vegas High School Students build an Electric Porsche
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLlzDHt-AQk

A story on the local TV news led me to check farther and discover that kids all across the USA are building electric cars to learn how they work.    The youngest ones are building and racing electric go-carts.  The older kids are converting street legal gasoline cars to electric, with the idea that they are building their own car to drive as soon as they get their drivers license.   An Internet search of EV Challenge brings up a seemingly endless stream of stories about people doing this.   Here at TC Tinkers 4-H Robot Club we are building a tan mini-van so that the insurance will be affordable for the teen age driver.  Details of that project are in several earlier columns.

CAVE HAS BECOME A MOVING SPHERE

Think of it as a track ball that you are inside of.   Yes, there are many advantages to being on the inside of the track ball when trying to maneuver through a virtual reality environment.  Especially when the projection system is improved so that you do not have to wear a head mounted display.  Although the floor is slightly curved, you will be able to walk in any direction, as far as you want to. 

If you wear CrystalEyes 3-D gasses to sync up with the images projected onto the surface of the sphere you can think of it as a personal eye max theater where you can walk around in the virtual environment.  To take your companions along, they need a sphere of their own and can be digitally added by your side, and you by theirs.  Evans and Sutherland have linked up fighter plane simulators so a group of individuals could fly in formation and maneuver jet simulators.  In this sphere you will be able to go for a walk with your friends.

The distance you can traverse on foot has no limit just as a track ball has no limit of rolling.  Where on a computer screen you reach the edges of the screen, in a virtual reality environment the world wraps back so if you walk far enough in one direction you may be able to circumnavigate the virtual reality environment… although you may be in for quite a hike.  With computer memory being cheap, you can put all the roads of the USA and Canada on one CD-ROM, and add Mexico as an option.  

WORLD AG EXPO, Tulare, CA  Feb 9-11, 2010

As you may have noticed, the USA is going out of the manufacturing busines.  The automation of manufacturing processes inside factory buildings used to be the bread and butter of automation and control engineers.    Where will automation and control engineers find their next project?  It might be in the automation of agricultural processes. 

Michigan is officially now no longer manufacturing state because its major industry right now is agriculture.   Orchard, vineyard, forest, field crops, and tourism are now what drives the Michigan’s economy.   As an automation or control engineer most likely were involved in automating manufacturing processes of the past.  You probably did not pay much attention to the agricultural industry but now that it is the major industry of many states, perhaps it is time to take a look at what you can do to automate their processes.   At a recent Ag show here in Traverse City, MI, there was a conspicuous lack of sensors and automatic controls.    Yes, tractors steer themselves, but they have for years now.  Where is the rest of the automation?

One of the only other bits of automation I saw was a proximity switch that turned the tree sprayer off when there was no tree present.   A simple but very important part for both minimizing the environmental impact of using pesticides and in saving the orchard money.  Chemicals cost as much as $100 a gallon so spraying them into a space where a tree is missing is an unnecessary loss.   Every orchard has at least one spray rig and each spray rig needs two proximity switches (one for each side).  Q1: How much are two proximity switches worth to an orchard in saved chemicals?  A1: A lot.   Q2:  How much do stock switches like this cost you from an automation parts catalog?  A2: …. well you get the idea.

If the idea of broadening your company’s market or if you are looking to start one of your own on the side, you might be inspired by the obvious opportunities that you spot at WORLD AG EXPO, Tulare, CA  Feb 9-11, 2010.  Check it out and let me know what you thought of the show.

TC Tinkers 4-H Robot Club 

Keep track of TC Tinkers 4-H Robot Club developments by joining their Yahoo NewsGroup at: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/TC_TINKERS_4-H_Robot_Club/join 

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SAY?
This is your chance to let me and the other readers know what is on your mind.  You can use the comments section at the end of the column to let us know what you think. 

To subscribe to AIMing for Automated Vehicles as a RSS feed: If you are using Internet Explorer to read this page, go to http://feeds.feedburner.com/CTL-AimingForAutomatedVehicles  and add it to your “Favorites” by clicking the little gold star with a green plus sign in your tool bar, then click on “subscribe to this feed…”. To view the feed in the future you go to “Favorites” by clicking on the little gold star and AIMing for Automated Vehicles should be listed there. Click on it and catch up on what is new!

GO ROBOTS !  

Paul F. Grayson - Chief Engineer
American Industrial Magic, LLC
“small engine and machinery repair”
TC Tinkers 4-H Robot Club
“Science, Engineering, and Technology”
390 4-Mile Rd. S.
Traverse City, MI 49686-8411
(231) 883-4463 Cell
pgrayson@aimagic.org
AIM: http://aimagic.org/
TC Tinkers 4-H Robot Club: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/TC_TINKERS_4-H_Robot_Club
CE Magazine: http://www.controleng.com/blog/1180000318.html