Anxiously Awaiting AUDI TTS Pikes Peak Climb (Autonomous Vehicle)

As the much-anticipated Pikes Peak Challenge for the autonomous vehicle by Stanford University approaches, I decided to take a look back at Odin and some research I did on the Victor Tango team and the DARPA urban challenge.

The Challenge
The Defense Advance Research Projects Agency is an arm of USDOD which has been birthplace for some of the greatest developments in technology of the late 20th Century, including the internet! DARPA had the first Grand Challenge in 2004 which featured a 150-mile road race with the most successful competitor reaching 7.38 mi. The second competition, held in 2005 featured a 132-mile off-road race was finished by five competitors and paved way for the Urban Challenge which was held in 2007.

Awesome-O
Last year, for my Introduction to Robotics course, my partner and I were tasked to research an application of robotics of our choice. Being an autonomous vehicle fanatic, I essentially did all the research myself and let him take care of compiling the presentation. After selecting to study the third-place finalist, Odin, I shot an e-mail over to the professor in charge of the project who replied with two papers: one about navigation, the other about  driving. I had previously learned a lot about path-following and simple algorithms from our very own autonomous vehicle:

Awesome-O - Our maze-solving robot

However, the two papers that I read exposed me to an impressively familiar combination of hardware and software tools used to produce an hierarchy of functionality that was much more reliable and drove full-scale vehicles.

Odin | Boss
The Victor Tango team of Virginia Tech utilized a slew of LabVIEW and NI software and interfaces to work with the many sensors, controllers and other instruments to achieve autonomy. The navigation paper describes a state machine architecture which identifies objects, sets goals and maneuvers around obstacles to reach a set destination. The following video from Wired provides an idea of what it takes for the competition champion,  Boss (Tartan Racing), although I'm not sure what the flux capacitor is used for. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lULl63ERek0

How can you get a car to drive all by itself?
Basically, the vehicle first receives instructions about where it needs to go and possibly how it should get there. It is also supplied with information regarding where it can or cannot go including some areas where some behaviors are restricted i.e. passing. By utilizing various combinations of instruments (LIDAR, RADAR, Differential GPS, INS, and various Optical Cameras), they are able to create a very accurate model of where the vehicle is and what is in its immediate (and sometimes distant) environment. From there, the software is able to 'make decisions' about how to behave and what exactly to do. Once an action decision is made, it is then carried out usually through drive-by-wire interface to the throttle, steering, shifting, and braking systems. The end result is an autonomous, driverless vehicle which can robustly reach a set destination irregardless of obstacles and the behavior of other vehicles. The whole is indeed greater than the sum of its parts:



Commercialization
The Urban Challenge was in 2007 and a lot really has happened since then. Most notable might be the commercial adoption of several autonomous features for parking and accident avoidance in luxury vehicles although this trend began way back in 1999 with the Japanese Nissan Cima. However, these commercial vehicles certainly have their limitations as well:



Shelley to Speed up Pikes Peak!
After winning the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge with Stanley and placing second in the 2007 Urban Challenge with Junior, the Stanford Racing Team is betting against all the odds and limitations to brave the arduous Pikes Peak race next month (September 2010) with Shelley, an Audi TTS, named after "Michèle Mouton, the first female driver to win the uphill climb." - http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/february1/shelley-pikes-peak-020310.html

"Unlike Stanley and Junior, who sense the road with radars and cameras, Shelley will follow a GPS trail from start to finish. The trick will be to stay on the road at race speeds while sliding around the corners."

Although the vehicle is not quite as autonomous as its predecessor, it is facing a daunting challenge and intends on doing so at ridiculous speeds. "If anything goes wrong on the summit, someone on the team can flip the "kill switch," Shelley's only remote control feature."


Excitement and Anticipation
I can't wait to see this car in action! Nerves are already on edge, media is starting to get excited and it's going to be a true spectacle to behold! If I can, I will try to go see it live. However, I still can't find a source which states the exact date in September that the timed race will be held. Now, if you're like me and can't wait, check out Shelley as she makes final preparations for the race:








Further reading:


Check out the August 12 Scientific American article - 

Automatic Auto: A Car That Drives Itself

February 3, 2010 Stanford University News article - 

Stanford's robotic Audi to brave Pikes Peak without a driver

If you would like a copy of the technical Virginia Tech publications, send me a message @fadeyifemi and I will connect you to my source.


Thanks for reading, hope this contributed a little to your Engineering Genius. Interested in more tech news, check out the T3CH H3LP blog I came across a little while back.

BP's Unnatural Disaster in the Gulf

After much consternation and mayhem, it seems that public attention and media coverage on the gulf coast has finally waned somewhat. However, one of the scientists I work with asked me: As an engineer, what do you think of the whole situation with the oil spill? Now, talk about a loaded question. Luckily, I had read through the SPE and ASME releases and had been fairly updated on the situation due to the incessant media coverage through TV, blogs, podcasts and more.

Avoiding the Blowout

My very limited understanding of the situation is that the blowout preventers may have malfunctioned for several different reasons and it is likely that it is not just the result of a single fault.

Taken from Mechanical Engineering magazine by ASME

Oil and natural gas in formation are under a lot of pressure. Well drilling operations will usually stop short of puncturing the reservoir and instead the well is cemented until production. In the case of an overpressurefrom reservoir forcing fluid up the pipe during drilling, blowout preventers are installed in order to seal off the drill pipe. Blowout preventers are hydraulic-powered shear rams which are meant to crush the drill pipe and form a seal.

In the Macondo blowout, the 450-ton, ten-year-old Cameron blowout preventer valves failed to function properly. The blowout preventer’s shear rams designed to cut through the drill pipe and seal it also failed to function. As a result, large volumes of oil and gas reached the rig floor and resulted in an explosion, loss of life, and sinking of the drilling rig. The continued escape of large volumes of hydrocarbons has created the massive oil spill that began hit the Louisiana coast in mid-May. 

The possible reasons for this failure are numerous, but the few listed in Mechanical Engineering magazine include:

1. Age - Although not a specific failure mode, ageing may contribute to wear and tear that may have not been identified during maintenance but lead to catastrophic failure.
2. Modifications - I don't understand what modifications were done, but these may have introduced elements that do not have a predictable effect on system safety.
3. Valve-failure - leakage of hydraulic fluid may have been sufficient to cause failure
4. Drill Pipe - thicker than standard drill pipe required for use at such depths under water may have been beyond the power of the blowout preventer shear rams.

Such issues are ultimately preventable but it was the combination of failures in critical systems that doomed the Deepwater Horizon. 

Spilling Blame

Now, just as the Mechanical Engineering article suggests, I agree that it is much too early to parcel out blame for the gulf disaster. However, when pressed to make the judgement call I had to provide a somewhat reasonable assessment.

I feel that ultimately, BP owns the well and essentially is responsible for the entire operation, although, separate components of the project were contracted to Transocean (drilling) and Halliburton (cementing). The faulty blowout preventer was likely a product under the supervision Transocean which faults them directly for the failure of the device. Such failure, however, is bound to happen when the predominant atmosphere regarding safety is lax and the focus has shifted to profitability.

Taken from Mechanical Engineering magazine by ASME

Large oil companies, in order to meet unwavering consumer demand for their products, are driven economically to produce and do so with minimal delays, especially when bureaucratic delays plague efforts to drill off the coast of the US. In meeting these challenges however, oil companies seem to have blatantly chosen to abandon safety in favor of the bottom line: Some continually push for access to greater drilling resources behind a ruse that it can be done safely and and reliably. Meanwhile, countless offshore rigs and wells continuously leak oil into the ocean at a mind-blowing rate although most can be prevented with better management, maintenance and replacement of aged equipment. What this disaster has shown me is that though the technology behind finding and producing oil and gas is growing at an amazing rate, it is ultimately the individuals and the cultures surrounding the technology that will chart the course for safety in the future.

1. There needs to be vigilant dedication to safety in all industries and at all levels
2. Industry-leaders need to consider the global implications of each project in addressing operational strategies and in selecting contractors
3. Public relations is a relationship, not just multi-million dollar ad campaigns. It is a dedication to safety in the product or service that is provided. It should start with engineering, not marketing.

So, this is not a time for blame. It is a time to remember that lives were lost as a result of ultimately preventable failures. It is a call to action and a call to change. This disaster has revealed major weaknesses in the strategies and technologies of the oil and gas industry. Action must be taken to improve awareness and dedication to safety and changes must be made to address the weaknesses in technology and response strategies  in order to restore public confidence in off-shore drilling and petroleum engineering.

If you are interested in finding out more about deepwater drilling and the Macondo well blowout, download the TechStuff Oil Drilling podcast, and read the Avoiding the Blowout feature in Mechanical Engineering and the somewhat superfluous FAQ on drilling and the spill from SPE. To find the Oil drilling podcast online, in the widget below, click Podcasts then select Oil Drilling Tech from the list.

ENGENIUS CHALLENGE

The answer to last week's riddle: What am I?

     A Snowflake!

Yeah, not a very tough riddle, but it's an original! I might try to write another someday soon.

For this week's challenge, head over to Fantastic Contraption and see how far you can get! I got to level 8 and could go further with more time. It is a really fun game but they have recently added ad-support which you will need to skip and live with - I wish they hadn't added so many ads.

Social Psych Experiments

Not a well-refined exploration this week but a series of fascinating YouTube videos of psychology experiments including the famous Milgram and Zimbardo experiments.

Selective attention test:


Elevators and conformity - funny:


The Asch Experiment - conformity and social psychology:


Highly controversial Milgram Experiment:


Famous Stanford Prison Experiment:


My brother and I had a lengthy discussion about all sorts of experiments that we'd heard about then we looked a few up on YouTube. I see these as reminders of the importance of strong ethical values and the need to uphold these values. It is sobering to think of how working within strictly defined boundaries can have such a powerful effect on all of us.

On a separate note, here's a short poem I wrote for a friend of mine:

Like a greedy angel, I fall from the heavens,

down, down to the ground.

I am never afraid,

I never even make a sound.

But if you try to save me,

if even for a moment you hold,

I will fall apart and lose my lonely beauty,

because my heart is cold.

So, as promised last week, this is also a riddle: What am I?

High-Tech Fashion and Integrated Personal Computing

Trends via TrendHunter.com.

Ubiquitous / Wearable Computers have been around for quite a while but they have seemed far too fanciful to me. However, i changed my mind the other day when I came across this Becoming Cyborg blog through two other tech blogs. Now, this is a very attractive wearable computer:

Sleek and comfortable -looking design uses a  Beagleboard mini computer and
features an iPhone for internet access.

It looks like he went through several iterations to arrive at this current model, the older models actually just worked with the iPhone as the computer and a different wearable display. Evolution:

Evolution of the concept from bulky iPhone display to wearable Unix computer.

But 'wearability' is not why I'm interested in these designs. I wanted to explore ubiquitous computing and natural interfaces. So ultimately, I'm curious about how computers can expand access to information without obscuring interaction with the real world. I'll refer to this as Integrated Personal Computing till I find a better word. Other similar terms you will find are pervasive computing and embedded computing. However, I think pervasive is more closely related to ubiquitous computing in that it refers to computing everywhere and in everything. Whereas, embedded computing would be more pertinent if the computer were somehow implanted or indistinguishable from the user or in the case of microcontrollers and other dedicated processors inside other devices. I feel that integrated personal computers will ultimately be realized as full-featured computers that are inconspicuous and feature natural user input.

Some wearable computers aren't much more so than my BlackBerry. They're both lightweight, can strap to my body, I enter input with my fingers and get output from a display. Advantage of the wearable display is hands-free viewing, which can be incredibly useful in certain situations. Also, when in the field, processing power almost linearly correlates with productivity. I can't take work out in the field if the computer can't run the software that I need or worse, if I end up staring at this half the time:

A few applications of wearable computing:

Bluntly  pragmatic wearable computer

Older implementation of a wearable display

Military application

Emergency Services

Telepresence - sort of an odd idea, read the description here

Leisure - Gaming?

Commercial - Logistics, Inventory management

Aircraft maintenance

Head-mounted displays come in many different shapes and sizes depending on the application. The Myvu brand of head-mounted displays is on par with the sleekest and most lightweight available today. The video below describes how to use a particular head-mounted display which also serves as input for a game.

Another crack at a head-mounted display:

This blog explains some concerns about wearable computing

Aside from the display portion of the user-interface is the user input. This versatility of input may ultimately affect how well an integrated personal computer can be utilized in the real world. Eye-tracking technology may offer accessibility for people with disabilities by utilizing eye-movements for input. This technology may also find future applicability to integrated personal computing as it allows hands-free user interface.

Eye-Tracking

Though not technically hands-free, the KITTY input device utilizes a novel input mechanism which may be inconspicuous enough for textual input in most applications.

KITTY integrated input device acts as a virtual keyboard

Motorola shows off a speech-operated computer that may offer a solution for hands-free input. The technology for speech recognition and command has improved significantly over the years, but as seen in the video, still has the glitches and annoyances that prove cumbersome at times.

The iPod Shuffle is a dedicated music player and not in any sense an open-ended computer. However, the speech output of the system is an impressive tool that may find use in other applications as well.

The Zypad, a product of Eurotech is a wrist-wearable computer that claims to be lightweight, ergonomic, yet full-featured. However, if you take a look at the specifications, with a 400mHz processor, 128mb RAM and 4 hours of battery life, you might be better off buying an iPhone 4 with an arm-band and strapping it to your wrist. I like the concept a lot, but the processing power seems dismal for most applications except stripped-down or dedicated software. These devices may possibly be useful in healthcare or for emergency response but they do not seem ruggedized enough to last very long.

Zypad wearable computer

Mobile devices at the forefront of computing power are much closer to integration on another front: augmented reality. Augmented reality seems to me a balance on the spectrum of virtual reality which supplements information from the real world with digital information. Here are some examples:

Augmented reality research

There are many other related technologies which may prove relevant to the advancement of integrated personal computing including flexible displays, health and energy monitoring devices, haptic technology, smart fibers, and swarm robotics among many others.

There is obviously much more to these ideas than is covered in this short exploration of mine. If you want to find out more about integrated personal computing? Check out the blogs listed above and the following sources:

http://www.computer.org/portal/web/pervasive/home

http://www.iswc.net/iswc10/inc_html/index.html

Turns out there might have been a problem with the 'fun' cipher from last week - I think they wrote it down wrong and it turned out making no sense. If you have any ideas, let me know, otherwise, I'll find some other challenge for the next update.