Welcome To California

  • October 25, 2007 12:36 am

This post was imported from a blog over at Case Western Reserve University that highlighted the DARPA Urban Challenge.

Hello All! My name is Brad Hughes, an undergraduate member of TeamCASE. I’ll be writing on this blog sporadically throughout our time here in California.

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Over twenty team members arrived in Los Angeles, California yesterday. From the airport, we split into squads and headed for the Victorville, the site of this year’s Urban Challenge. As we traveled through the San Bernardino Mountain range, we stared in awe at the smoke and flames that are engulfing California (pictured at right.)
DEXTER, our autonomous entry to the Urban Challenge, arrived this morning at 5:00am in Adelanto. Several team members met Roadway at their shipping dock and moved the robot onto a car hauler that transported DEXTER to our camp on site at the Southern California Logistics Airport. Our leader Dr. Wyatt Newman officially registered us this morning at 7:00am and received our official race guidelines and materials as the rest of the team arrived in a caravan of vehicles.

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The RNDFs, or Route Network Definition Files, were one of the major pieces of information received from DARPA this morning – they are a very crucial part to the competition. The RNDFs define the route and its interconnectivity – the intersections and roadways that we will autonomously travel. We currently have teams of students working to simulate our AI (artificial intelligence) and control algorithms on these maps to pinpoint any last minute bugs.
Now that I got the important part out of the way, I’ll give a little intro on who I am so that you can understand my perspective on the project and competition.
I’m currently a sophomore electrical engineering undergraduate student. A little over a year ago I approached the team with interest of working on the project. The team invited me to their weekly research group meeting where I volunteered to work on low level Vehicle Control with our Vehicle Control Tech Lead, Amaury Rolin. I worked through last fall and the spring. This past summer, I applied for SOURCE funding from the Provost’s office and Case Alumni Association. Having received funding, I spent the summer in Cleveland, Ohio on the Case Western Reserve University campus to design, implement, and test algorithms that teach DEXTER how to complete his missions. Working on DEXTER has been a large facet of my life for the past year, and I’m really excited to see how the next two weeks of go.

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.

TeamCASE Completes Site Visit

  • June 29, 2007 9:44 pm
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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!