Flying Fox DARPA Grand Challenge. Report to Sponsors. May 5, 2005

Transcription

1 Flying Fox 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge Report to Sponsors May 5, 2005 The vehicle name, Flying Fox, originates from a bat with unusually sharp vision Page 1

2 DARPA Site Visit 18 team members showed up for a demonstration of Flying Fox capabilities on Tuesday, May 3, at the Del Mar Fairgrounds. Dr. Larry Stott, Director of the DARPA Advanced Technology Office, and Khine Latt, ATO Program Manager performed a thorough examination of the vehicle and its performance on the obstacle course. Flying Fox completed four runs through the obstacle course. The crowd cheered on the optional run, as we demonstrated the obstacle avoidance by weaving around three closely spaced trash cans, where the vehicle had to find a narrow opening, while at the same time staying within the tight course boundary. From Left to Right Khine Latt, Larry Stott, Mike Vest, Dan Komaromi This was followed by a detailed overview of the vehicle systems, including sensors, software, actuators, shock isolation, navigation equipment, power generation, interprocess communication, and vision processing. Larry took notes about our sponsors and the sponsor-provided equipment. He was quite interested in the companies supporting the team. We are making sure that all of our sponsors are noticed the DARPA throughout the event. Based on the outstanding vehicle performance and our extensive discussions with Larry, the team is confident that we will be selected to move on to the National Qualification Event in September. Page 2

3 Development Progress Approximately 90% of the vehicle infrastructure is complete. We are currently moving our software from the PC workstation to the SBS Technologies CR9 boards. The vehicle actuation, navigation, and sensing equipment are all mounted and ready to support the complex software modules. This means we will be out in the field performing extensive testing this summer. The team has made the transition from component design and construction to software development based on extensive surveys of autonomous research and university collaboration with distinguished experts in the field. Adaptive Vision Professor John Weng and the SAIL teachable robot The Flying Fox breakthrough in sensing is an adaptive vision system that learns how the vehicle should drive in unknown environments through training sessions. Interesting road features are automatically derived, stored, and generalized to previously unseen terrain. This technique is inspired by the manner in which humans learn to drive, with advanced algorithms from the field of computational neuroscience. The team is supporting the work of three PhD students under the direction of Professor John Weng at Michigan State University. We are welcoming sponsor contributions for this breakthrough research. Please contact us as soon as possible for upgrading the sponsorship level and gaining additional market visibility. Additional information on this research is available at: Page 3

4 Vehicle Logos This summer we will place the sponsor logos on the vehicle. James Ruano designs race car paint schemes for NASCAR and NHRA. We are collecting the logo EPS vector files for James, which we are organizing on a CD in separate folders based on the relative contribution amount. James will then complete his design using the proportional logo sizing information and vehicle dimensions. Media Exposure In addition to newspaper reports, the team has been approached by the Discovery Channel and PBS NOVA for inclusion in documentaries. Most recently, we spoke with Bob Tarlau, producer of KTTV Fox 11 News. KTTV will highlight our team for a special report during one of our upcoming field tests. Our website at continues to receive a large number of visitors (50,000 hits per month) from Fortune 500 companies, military organizations, universities, and the general public. The visitor frequency continues to grow at increasing rates as the event nears. For a flavor of visitor types, listed below are a small sampling of the domains that visited the site within the past few hours, at the time of this writing: aron.stanford.edu cerberus.tobyhanna.army.mil lengthy-f.frc.ri.cmu.edu owpout-1.st.northropgrumman.com gate3-sandiego.nmci.navy.mil hif-koby5.hill.af.mil oproxy5.rockwellcollins.com mystic.caltech.edu gate14-quantico.nmci.usmc.mil ncfmcc2.ford.com unspec amerhonda.com gk-central-23.srvs.usps.gov host ptr.hqda.pentagon.mil webproxy3x.mitre.org ccant.meijo-u.ac.jp w3gw.bss.boeing.com aquarius.larc.nasa.gov h114.perceptek.net cudgcb60.mae.cornell.edu test14.me.berkeley.edu bi-02pt1.bluebird.ibm.com proxy1a.external.lmco.com jericho-ext.edwards.af.mil Page 4

5 Flying Fox - ready for the DARPA site visit at the Del Mar Fairgrounds Page 5

6 Our sponsors make it happen! Page 6