As I mentioned in my last post, I would be attending the 2009 Autonomous Lawnmower Competition hosted by the Institute of Navigation. Myself, along with a team of fellow Case Western Reserve University students, represented the university at the competition in May, 2009. After some frustrating hardware failures and last-minute MacGuyver fixes, we pulled through and came out on top. We placed 1st out of six teams in the dynamic mowing competition. Photos from the competition should make their way onto the site. Oh wait, the gallery is broken. Scratch that. One of these days, a new gallery should come online… and then new photos can be added. As you know, it might be another two to three months before I get that online, so don’t hold your breath. But know that it is on the list of things to do in my spare time.

This past summer, I worked at ENSCO, Inc., in Springfield, VA. I had an absolutely fantastic experience at ENSCO. My experience was so great, that I hope to go back and intern again next summer (between my Senior year and the beginning of my graduate studies.) In the mean time, I’m maintaining a few hours here-and-there with ENSCO continuing work on the project(s) I completed during my brief internship.

Ah, you see the “beginning of my graduate studies” there… Yes, that’s right; I’ll be staying at Case as part of the BS/MS combine Bachelors/Masters program in Electrical Engineering. That’s just fancy wording that should, if all goes as planned, allow me to graduate with my B.S. in 4 years (as planned.) And — with another year, my M.S. in Electrical Engineering. To kick off my masters studies, I’m enrolled in two graduate level courses this fall: EECS490 (computer vision) and EECS491 (artificial intelligence.) Other than these two graduate classes, I’m taking a relatively (only 15 credit) light workload this semester. However, I’ve got things to keep me busy…

… which is where the exciting part of this semester comes in. As I mentioned in the last post, I’m directing West Side Story for The Case Footlighters this fall. Audition information has been posted on the website (http://footlighters.case.edu.) Essentially, open auditions start on the Sunday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of the first week of classes. Callbacks are the following Saturday. First read through is the following Sunday. And, in about two months and one week later: performances.

I’m hoping that I’ll have time to blog about being director. If I don’t have time to do the updates, I’ll try to at least keep some semblance of a record of the notable parts of the experience so that I can write later.

Well, that’s all for now!

I’ll try and get the gallery back up ASAP! (Thankfully I’ve got a backup dated 07.03.08!)

Ooops!

*** Update ***
I restored the DB and filesystem from earlier this month and got everything back up without a hitch. Todo List: More backups.

As you may know, TeamCASE had a site visit from DARPA on Friday, June 22nd, 2007. Our team practiced protocol and professionalism — our robot also practiced the same principals and delivered a top-notch behavior. I was very fortunate to be chosen by my advisor, Dr. Newman, as the day’s E-Stop operator. I got to be very close to the action (in the control vehicle) and got to interface directly with the DARPA officials.

I don’t want to go into too much detail of our site visit — as other teams may still be having site visits. I can say, however, that we demonstrated every required element of the site visit successfully. DEXTER performed basic navigation, U-Turns, static obstacle passing, out of lane obstacle avoidance, intersection precedence, and intersection queuing without any major holdups.
We only had a few hiccups throughout that day that were quickly resolved.

Our officials took a few moments in the conference room to discuss our scores. They invited the entire team in to wrap up the official site visit. Everything sounded VERY promising. The only thing they took points off for, that we know of, was hitting three center lane maker cones.

At one point, our DARPA officials were overheard having discussions that compared our start times to those of Carnegie Mellon University — a top class team. They also commented, “At this rate, we’re going to get to leave early!”

After finishing our site visit almost an hour early, our officials stuck around to get a demo of DEXTER’s advanced behaviors — such as “slam the brakes” when intersection precedence is lost, lead vehicle following, and more intricate intersection situations. Our DARPA officials seemed pleased with their DEXTER experience — after the show-and-tell session, they shook hands with team members and departed.

About 25-30 people were present at the site visit, with 10 of them being our official site visit crew. Others present include team members, our Plain Dealer reporter John Mangels, family, and friends of DEXTER.

There were two mentions of DEXTER in Saturday’s Plain Dealer — and can be found online here.
Another column in the paper describes each of the Track A teams that we are up against, and can be found online here.

Even though our official score is unknown and will probably never be disclosed, we expect it to be high enough to earn an invitation to the NQE (National Qualification Event.) Also check out our team website for videos and photos of our progress.

Southwest United States, here we come!