Life at the End of a Project

  • November 19, 2007 3:25 am

Its finally over! The 2007 Urban Challenge, recently hosted in Victorville, Calif., had six teams successfully complete it. (Leading the pack were 1) CMU, 2) Stanford, 3) Virginia Tech). I got to travel with TeamCASE as not only a team member, but one of the five selected to launch the robot for every autonomous test. The experience was an awesome culmination of over a year’s worth of work. We finished in the top twenty teams. Even though we didn’t make it to the final round, we were thrilled with our performance as a first year entrant. As with any government-led operation, politics seemed to corrupt formal analysis of data. I personally think politics hurt our team’s chances of advancing to the final race. (Disclaimer: This does not represent the opinion of Case Western Reserve University, TeamCASE and its leadership, or any other team members.)

My parents traveled to southern California to watch the race (had TeamCASE been in the field). Instead of preparing for the final event, we ended up doing a little sight seeing in the area. We traveled North to Sequoia National Park to see the big Sequoia trees and over East to see Hoover Dam. Obviously, I took lots of dam pictures on our dam tour and will put them online within the next week or so.

So I’m sure you’re asking… Now what? Well, I’m continuing to do research for Dr. Newman. Two projects I’m currently working on (that in combination should take less time than the Urban Challenge) are IGVC and FIRST. IGVC, or the Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition, is a land based autonomous robot competition. Dr. Newman is a senior project design group adviser for Case’s IGVC team. After our return from California, he asked me to help out with part of the project that meshes very well with all of my previous work on the Urban Challenge. The other project I’m volunteering for is FIRST — a high school robotics competition. A group of undergraduate and graduate students are mentoring a local high school in robotic design and control so that they can enter the competition. I’ll talk more about the approaches they chose later (as the project unfolds.)

And now that I have more time, you’ll finally be hearing more from me!

– Until then.

Victorville, California…

  • August 16, 2007 9:30 pm
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… you’ve been Urban Challenged.

On Thursday, August 9th, 2007, my friends and I, along with most of TeamCASE, stood silent in front of Andy Horchler’s laptop during a brief break from our field testing. In the background, a Discovery Science channel video crew awaits for our reaction to the all-important announcement. In just a few moments, we would be told if we were going to continue our quest for the $2 million DARPA-hosted prize in autonomous robotics.

Dr. Tony Tether appears — and begins to discuss the various elements that will make up the Urban Challenge on November 3rd, 2007. He marvels at the teams’ progress so far. The location is announced — Victorville, California. A satellite image shows a decommissioned air force base that is now used for military field training. The base is soon to be completely shut down and turned into a robotics course for the national spotlight.

Over ninety teams initially showed interest in the Urban Challenge. Only fifty-two teams passed the video evaluation. It is announced that thirty-six teams will be invited to the NQE, or National Qualification Event. For a brief few seconds — the list appears; Team CASE has made it. The Team cheers and returns back to testing some new behaviors of DEXTER — the most significant being Parking Lot and zone integration.

We’re proud to say that Case will be in the national spotlight of a prestigious robotics competition that is usually led by the best and top universities in the country. We hope to rise to the expectations of our family, friend, and university administrators and perform well in October/November.

Speaking of the National Spotlight, TeamCASE has been selected as one of approximately ten teams to be highlighted in a six episode TV documentary on the Urban Challenge. The Discovery Science channel is commissioning Marabella Productions to produce the series. So far, a camera crew has tagged with us for four days — capturing over twenty hours of footage. A few photos have been added to the gallery that show us in front of the camera. We are really excited to represent Case Western Reserve University on national television when the show premieres in February.

The CAA and a Dexter Demo

  • June 7, 2007 11:36 pm

Its been a while since I’ve written on my blog… perhaps its because I’ve been really busy with work. Speaking of work, everything is going pretty well with the Urban Challenge here at Case.

This weekend, the Case Alumni Association is having its annual summer reunion. I’ll be covering a lot of their events tomorrow and Saturday for the CAA and will be publishing the resultant photos in the gallery.

If you aren’t familiar, the CAA is an alumni organization that is tightly integrated with the Math, Science, and Engineering departments at Case. They fund many things on campus — including the SOURCE funding that is letting me do research this summer. The CAA also supports an array of scholarships… I don’t know a single student that doesn’t appreciate everything they do! Thanks for everything, CAA!

Team Case is giving a demonstration of Dexter this weekend for the CAA and their reunion attendees. It’ll be happening Saturday morning between 9:00am and Noon at Case’s West Quad parking lot. If you’re interested in going, give me an email and I’ll get you more information.

More to come after the reunion festivities and demo.