Dave Getzschmann / Star staff
Wayne Guthmiller, above, of the SciAutonics/Auburn Engineering team of Thousand
Oaks, prepares RASCAL, an ATV that drives itself, for tests in preparation for
the second DARPA Grand Challenge this week at the California Speedway in
Fontana. At top, team members, from left, Bob Addison, Kevin Knoedler,
Guthmiller and Ron Dilley conduct more checks on the operating mechanisms on the
unique vehicle.
Two area teams will test their vehicles' brawn and
brains this week against some high-tech competition in the hope of advancing to
a desert race with a $2 million prize.
Participants will flex their intellectual prowess when they gather Wednesday
for the semifinals of the second DARPA Grand Challenge at the California
Speedway in Fontana.
Like parents teaching a child to ride a bike, teams of scientists, engineers
and tech-savvy geeks will stand back and let loose unmanned vehicles guided by
sensors that they have spent countless nights and weekends building. They are
preparing for the unknown because the final desert course is still a secret.
At Fontana, 43 vehicles will try to traverse a 2- to 3-mile course over the
raceway's infield, trying to avoid obstacles by using technology such as radar,
global positioning systems, cameras and other sensors.
Challenges could include driving through narrow gates, driving up and down a
steep hill, finding the best path through multiple obstacles, driving through a
tunnel, sharp turns and wet conditions.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a research and development
division under the Department of Defense, created the race to advance technology
for autonomous military vehicles.
No one won last year's race and its $1 million prize, but many teams' members
said they feel better prepared this year.
"We are running out of stuff we haven't done," said Bill Kehaly, team leader
of Axion Racing of Westlake Village.
That's a far cry from last year, when teams were wishing for more time to
work out technical bugs.
Members of the SciAutonics team of Thousand Oaks recalled how they weren't
sure the vehicle would be up and running until right before the race last year.
"At least, this year we knew 18 different things that broke last year," said
team member Kishor Bapat.
The semifinals will begin with an opening ceremony at 9 a.m. Wednesday and
continue through Oct. 5. After the trials end that day, officials are expected
to announce 20 finalists. The desert race will start at Primm, Nev., on Oct. 8.
Admission to all competitions is free.
The route will not be disclosed until hours before the race begins and could
stretch up to 175 miles through the desert and take up to 10 hours to complete.
"It's kind of a mystery," said Melanie Dumas, Chief Information Officer for
Axion Racing. "They could throw so many curveballs at us in so many different
ways."
SciAutonics
The SciAutonics team practices at a future park site off Westlake Boulevard.
Team leader John Porter said the team wouldn't have a suitable place to test
outside of the desert without the park site, which features a gravel drive, dirt
and scrubby grasses.
RASCAL is a modified ATV equipped with a rollbar, chair and seat belt,
features that were included for possible military use in the future.
Wood platforms on the front hold laser radar and ultrasonic sensors and a
motor for controlling the steering. A generator is attached to one side of the
vehicle to create electricity to run all the equipment. A laptop is secured to
the opposite side, though it will be replaced with a rugged harddrive. The back
is a maze of cables and switches.
The startup list is five pages long.
Bob Addison, who heads the sensors technicians, said the checklist may seem
like overkill, but it's necessary.
"Just like any complex mechanism, there tend to be a number of details and
you tend to forget them," he said. "It's not that something bad happens. More
often, nothing happens."
When nothing happens, the ATV doesn't move, the mandatory lights and horn
don't go on and the team scrambles to find the problem.
As the sun set orange above the hills on a recent evening in Thousand Oaks,
the team drove RASCAL to a starting point and ran it through some tests.
A team member sometimes sits inside the vehicle to watch the laptop screen
and see what the vehicle is doing. The vehicle sometimes operates on its own
with someone stationed with a kill switch, which can shut down the vehicle into
idle mode or turn off the engine. It's a safety measure that would be used in
the desert race.
RASCAL uses an S-shaped pathway for basic testing such as running, speed and
making 90-degree turns. It has a couple longer courses where it has to tackle
bumpy terrain.
Sometimes the vehicle runs a route without a hitch. Other times -- as
happened when one key sensor was inadvertently cut off during installation of
new software -- the team members scratch their heads, try to find the problem
and test different possible solutions.
SciAutonics team members go out to their test site in the evenings after work
and on weekends. The team is made up of people with day jobs at places such as
Rockwell Scientific, Amgen and WellPoint.
SciAutonics is teamed with Auburn University on RASCAL.
Axion Racing
The Slash X Ranch Cafe in Barstow is a one-story wooden building boasting
ribs, barbecue chicken and steak, with windows covered in racing stickers and
saddles on the roof. Dirt bikes and ATVs are parked in a cluster outside.
Grand Challenge teams set up for testing in a nearby corral. Barstow is where
last year's race started.
Axion Racing brought out Spirit on a recent weekend, a modified Jeep Grand
Cherokee with sensors sprouting from a cage over its hood and vents in back for
the hot air from servers, marine batteries, alternator and inverters in the
back. Many team members are from San Diego.
Spirit makes its way along a path using input from several sensors, including
laser radar, stereo cameras and touch sensors. As Dumas explains it, all of the
car's sensors vote on where the car should go. Those votes are weighted, with
the resulting answer determining where Spirit heads.
The idea is that sensors that pick up an obstacle will carry enough votes to
move the car away from the obstacle without causing it to flinch at every bush
it picks up on the side of the road.
The inside of the vehicle has a distinctive cockpit feel. Wires run over the
windows from the front to the back where most of the equipment sits and an
emergency stop button is located in the ceiling.
The INS, which uses the Earth's rotation to pinpoint North, is hidden under
the console between the two front seats. Components that change computer signals
into commands for the gas, brake and steering wheel are wedged between the back
seats.
A touchscreen and keyboard in front provide constant information.
Spirit has had its challenges. It also has a tendency to push away from
obstacles that rise out of the ground, such as a wall of rock on one side of the
car, while being less responsive to a dropoff on the other side.
That tendency caused the team to make some notes as they went through a
recent run, with Chief Engineer Josh O'Briant occasionally hovering his hands
over the steering wheel in case he needed to keep the vehicle from plunging over
the side.
Then there are the little quirks. At one point in the middle of Spirit's
practice run, a box suddenly flashed up on the screen. It was asking for someone
to please install a security update for the Windows system.
The real world
Discussions among Grand Challenge teams often turn to real-world
applications.
SciAutonics team member Monte Khoshnevisan said certain things make sense,
such as dangerous or repetitive work. He predicts one of the first applications
will be a lead truck shepherding a line of "followers" down the road.
"In the future, I think vehicles will do a lot better than people,"
Khoshnevisan said.
"That's true," Bapat replied. "They don't get tired; they don't drink ... and
they don't need windshield wipers."
The Axion Racing team talked about the real-world applications over lunch.
In a military situation, vehicles may be going into an unknown area, but the
team members say there are things that could help, such as satellite maps.
Kehaly said one vehicle could go in first to get a sense of the area before
sending in other vehicles.
Component Engineer George Spalding suggested autonomous ground vehicles could
work together with unmanned planes.
Then there are the other applications, such as civilian vehicles. Vision
Programmer Tim Doyle said those vehicles would have tons of information,
including street maps that would help them set out routes.
Fierce and friendly competition
Kevin Knoedler is new to the SciAutonics team. He worked with a Los Angeles
team last year, but the SciAutonics team is close to home in Newbury Park.
He'll be competing against his former team, but he said the competition
mostly has been friendly.
There is smack-talking. Kehaly said teams needed to be out in the desert
testing or they wouldn't survive.
"They'll go a couple miles and just get crushed," he said.
He said it reminds him of college football. You respect your competition, but
you want to win.
"It's a ton of people, and a lot of money and a lot of pressure," he said.
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