Two area teams are a step closer
to earning a spot in an autonomous vehicle race across
the desert that features a $2 million prize.
Axion Racing and SciAutonics/ Auburn Engineering were
among 40 teams nationwide selected to compete in a
qualifying event at Fontana Motor Speedway this fall.
The top 20 teams will race on Oct. 8.
The
semifinalists were announced Monday for the Grand
Challenge, a government-sponsored competition that ends
with a race of unmanned vehicles through an as-yet
undisclosed stretch of desert. Nearly 200 people entered
the event this year, but only 118 were chosen for site
visits.
During those visits, officials of the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency assessed the vehicles
of different teams and put them through a series of
tests that included avoiding trash can obstacles in a
200-meter course.
Last year, no team finished the race from Barstow to
Primm, Nev., to claim a then-$1 million prize.
Program manager Ron Kurjanowicz said in a release
that the field of competitors was very strong this year
and paring the group to 40 teams was difficult.
"It is truly remarkable how much progress the Grand
Challenge teams have made in a relatively short period
of time," he said. "The (National Qualification Event)
will be very exciting, and we will see autonomous
vehicles performance that was not possible a year ago.
"The teams' creative sparks are flying, and they are
making impressive progress toward DARPA's goal of
developing technologies that will save the lives of our
men and women in uniform on the battlefield,"
Kurjanowicz said, referring to the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency.
Team aced its site visit
Axion Racing team leader Bill Kehaly said his team's
modified sport utility vehicle did "exceptionally well"
during the site visit, making flawless runs. He said the
team aced its site visit because it is constantly
running the vehicle through test runs. Axion LLC is in
Westlake Village.
Having more time to prepare than last year also made
a difference, he said.
He's pushing for the pole position on the semifinals,
arguing that his vehicle shouldn't be behind any other
vehicles that don't have navigation or radar systems as
advanced as those on his team's vehicle, Spirit of
Kosrae.
The position is important, because there are few
places to pass other vehicles in the qualifying races,
he said.
John Porter, team leader for SciAutonics/Auburn
Engineering, said his team had a few things that didn't
work, but mostly the team accomplished what it set out
to do with the site visit.
The first run was flawless. In the second run, the
vehicle snagged one of the obstacles.
In the third run, the battery for the remote
emergency stop died and the car stopped.
Porter said the team recovered but had to put someone
into the car for safety, and the time was terrible
because of the problem.
Still, it was good enough to qualify SciAutonics LLC,
which is in Thousand Oaks.
Ralph Benham had little hope of making it to the
semifinals after his vehicle's site visit. This was the
first year of entering the Grand Challenge for Benham, a
Ventura engineering consultant, and the Easy Does It
team, which didn't qualify.
"We started too late, so we had very little stuff
functional to show the folks when they came for the site
visit," he said.
The vehicle could do what it needed to do -- it could
go and stop at a reasonable speed, read the Global
Positioning System, turn the steering wheel to follow
the course and avoid objects -- but it couldn't do all
of those things at the same time, not in time for the
site visit, anyway.
"We had a good vehicle; we just weren't done," he
said, noting that he and his team partners worked on
getting all of those things integrated after the site
visit.
"We at least showed ourselves we know what we we're
doing."
Though disappointed, Benham said he would enter
again. Though he's not going to the semifinals as a
contestant, he said he would attend just to watch and
planned to continue working on his vehicle's vision
system.
"This has been great," he said. "If it wouldn't have
been so exhausting, it would have been fun."
Competitive advantages
The local competing teams each claim competitive
advantages for the semifinals and final race across the
desert:
- SciAutonics/Auburn Engineering: Porter said the
RASCAL, a modified all-terrain vehicle, is a good
vehicle for the course. It is unlikely to get hung up
on a high berm the way some vehicles did in the last
race.
The downside is that the vehicle doesn't have a large
enclosed interior to protect the electronics, so the
team has had to design for that, he said.
The hardware is rugged, also a plus, and the
software, which is proprietary, has good algorithms for
obstacle detection and approach, he said.
- Axion Racing: Kehaly said Spirit of Kosrae will be
ahead of most of the competition with an Inertial
Navigation System that finds its location in space,
technology often used by planes. Most other entries
rely on GPS that relies on satellite feeds.
The team also is planning to equip the vehicle with a
helicopter radar a company in Canada is trying to invert
for use on autonomous vehicles to map out the road and
obstacles ahead.
Porter said the SciAutonics team plans to start a
fundraising and sponsorship campaign now that it's in
the semifinals. People can invest in SciAutonics LLC,
the company formed to develop the technology for RASCAL.
"At this point, we're living on the resources left
over from last year," he said.
The team didn't want to go out soliciting funds until
its position in the semifinals was assured, he said.
Kehaly said Axion LLC has started to look beyond the
races with the technology it has developed. The company
is now working with Michigan State University on
research for NASA using the 3D LADAR (laser radar
system) used in Spirit of Kosrae.
"We expect to continue to work with NASA for the 2013
robot mission to the dark side of the moon," he said.
Including Inertial Navigation System in the vehicle
makes sense for the Grand Challenge as well as the moon,
he said.
"What we're doing is we're thinking long term,"
Kehaly said. "We're doing this for the race but also
thinking about what's going to happen with our vehicle
on the moon."
On the Net:
http://www.axionracing.com/
http://www.sciautonics.com/
http://www.darpa.gov/grandchallenge
|
Home
.gif){kind=spacer}
