Re: Great opportunity for Ada application

[Jerry Petrey <"jdpetrey<NOSPAM>"@raytheon.com>]

"James S. Rogers" wrote (with deletions):

>
> Having done some Ada work on teleoperated ground vehicles I
> will venture the following opinions:
> .....

>
> Your vehicle will probably need a reliable 4 wheel drive an
> at least a 30 gallon gas tank. Your vehicle is allowed to
> continuously report to you during the race. This would be
> a "good idea". You cannot send it commands except for
> the E-Stop (emergency stop) command, which is included
> for safety reasons. Note that any repair or refuling must be
> handled autonomously. This provides a challenge. Your
> autonomous system may need to turn off the engine
> during refuling and repairs. It will need to continue enough
> capability to restart the engine at the end of the pit stop.
> The vehicle must be able to sense end of pit stop without
> a discrete signal being sent from a biological entity.
> This means that your checkpoint must have the ability
> to signal the vehicle without your direct action. Of course
> it would be best if you can avoid a pit stop altogether.
>
> Anticipate a lot of dust, high winds, rough terrain and hot
> weather for this race.
>
> I estimate that the materials needed to create and operate
> this vehicle will cost at least $200,000.00. This cost does
> not include engineering effort or manufacturing/assembly time.
>
> Jim Rogers

Thanks for your inputs Jim, I knew you had worked on something like this for
the Army in the past.
I agree with your assessment in general.  The course will be about half on
road  and
half off road but will all be cleared for the race - there will be no
requirement to obey
traffic signals or laws other than there will be some reasonable speed limit
imposed and
of course the safety issue that it must sense and avoid a hazardous situation.

I think avoiding the repairs/refueling is the best approach.  Although the
vehicle will be
required to stop at the checkpoint (there could be more that one), it does not
have to
do anything there - I like the simple approach of it just waiting until
cleared to proceed.
It would be tough to pull off in a year but I would think it might be possible
for a small
dedicated (and well funded) team.  Of course if there is no winner, it will
repeated each
year until there is (up until around 2007).


Jerry
--
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-- Jerry Petrey
-- Senior Principal Systems Engineer - Navigation (GPS/INS), Guidance, &
Control
-- Raytheon Missile Systems          - Member Team Ada & Team Forth
-- NOTE: please remove <NOSPAM> in email address to reply
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