Great opportunity for Ada application

Great opportunity for Ada application

[Jerry Petrey]

DARPA is sponsoring a competition with a one million dollar prize for an
autonomous vehicle to transverse a course between L.A. and Las Vegas in 2004.
This would be a great opportunity for an Ada controlled entry.
See http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/ for details.
Perhaps there is some small company around that would like to undertake this
challenge and make a name for themselves and show what Ada can do.


Jerry
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-- 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
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Great opportunity for Ada application

[Rodrigo García]

Jerry Petrey wrote:
> DARPA is sponsoring a competition with a one million dollar prize for an
> autonomous vehicle to transverse a course between L.A. and Las Vegas in 2004.
> This would be a great opportunity for an Ada controlled entry.
> See http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/ for details.
> Perhaps there is some small company around that would like to undertake this
> challenge and make a name for themselves and show what Ada can do.
> 
> 
> Jerry
> --
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> -- 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
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 

   Hmmm... It seems that a US team should contract me if I want to 
participate.

"Eligibility

The race is open to US entities.  This includes US corporations, US 
non-profit organizations, US universities, sole proprietors that are US 
citizens or permanent residents, and partnerships of US citizens or 
permanent residents.  US teams may have individual members who are foreign."

Rodrigo

Re: Great opportunity for Ada application

[David Botton]

If some one wants to flip the bill, I'm in :-)

David Botton

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jerry Petrey @raytheon.com>" <"jdpetrey<NOSPAM>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
To: <comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 12, 2003 12:09 PM
Subject: Great opportunity for Ada application


> DARPA is sponsoring a competition with a one million dollar prize for an
> autonomous vehicle to transverse a course between L.A. and Las Vegas in
2004.
> This would be a great opportunity for an Ada controlled entry.
> See http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/ for details.
> Perhaps there is some small company around that would like to undertake
this
> challenge and make a name for themselves and show what Ada can do.
>
>
> Jerry
> --
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------
>
> -- 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
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> comp.lang.ada mailing list
> comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
> http://ada.eu.org/mailman/listinfo/comp.lang.ada

Re: Great opportunity for Ada application

[Jeffrey Carter]

David Botton wrote:
> If some one wants to flip the bill, I'm in :-)

Assuming he meant "foot the bill", Ditto. I'd like to work on this if it 
happens.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"When danger reared its ugly head, he bravely
turned his tail and fled."
Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Re: Great opportunity for Ada application

[Jerry Petrey]

Jeffrey Carter wrote:

> David Botton wrote:
> > If some one wants to flip the bill, I'm in :-)
>
> Assuming he meant "foot the bill", Ditto. I'd like to work on this if it
> happens.
>
> --
> Jeff Carter
> "When danger reared its ugly head, he bravely
> turned his tail and fled."
> Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Yeah, that was what I was hoping for also.  I have done some small robots at
home.
This should be quite a challenge.  I think Jim Rogers has done some work along
these
lines - maybe he has some ideas.

Jerry
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-- 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
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

RE: Great opportunity for Ada application

[Robert C. Leif]

I suspect that this is way too big a project. However, I do believe that an
Ada robotics and imaging group would be very useful. To that end, I am
creating a medical device, which will employ one or more servo motors. Is
their unclassified Ada source for these systems? 
There is an Ada 83 imaging package. Unfortunately, the Ada that runs the
National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore has not been released.
Thus, a large part of the potential technology transfer benefits from this
very expensive undertaking has been lost.
Bob Leif

-----Original Message-----
From: Jerry Petrey @raytheon.com> [mailto:"jdpetrey<NOSPAM] 
Sent: Wednesday, February 12, 2003 5:56 PM
To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
Subject: Re: Great opportunity for Ada application

Jeffrey Carter wrote:

> David Botton wrote:
> > If some one wants to flip the bill, I'm in :-)
>
> Assuming he meant "foot the bill", Ditto. I'd like to work on this if it
> happens.
>
> --
> Jeff Carter
> "When danger reared its ugly head, he bravely
> turned his tail and fled."
> Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Yeah, that was what I was hoping for also.  I have done some small robots at
home.
This should be quite a challenge.  I think Jim Rogers has done some work
along
these
lines - maybe he has some ideas.

Jerry
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----

-- 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
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----

Re: Great opportunity for Ada application

[Marin David Condic]

Ada code to control servo motors? Yeah. Unclassified source exists to do
that. But that doesn't mean that a company would give it to you. Most would
consider it to be "proprietary" in some way. Besides, the code would likely
be very specific to the particular servo in question and to the particular
application.

It depends on what you want. The actual control laws that drives a given
actuator is typically rather small. You get a request, it does some rate and
range limiting, you have some kind of transfer function and you generate an
output. There's a bit more to it when you get into the minor loop closure,
but that is also very device and application specific. Most of the code goes
into failure detection and accommodation which again is very device and
application specific. Beyond that, you have an even larger hunk of code that
deals with the I/O and scheduling of your control laws - the Operating
System, if you will. Possibly you can use something off the shelf there, but
it depends a lot on what the box that is going to hold the whole thing looks
like.

MDC
--
======================================================================
Marin David Condic
I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
My project is: http://www.jsf.mil/

Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ a c m . o r g

    "Going cold turkey isn't as delicious as it sounds."
        -- H. Simpson
======================================================================

Robert C. Leif <rleif@rleif.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.5.1045152345.13246.comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org...
I suspect that this is way too big a project. However, I do believe that an
Ada robotics and imaging group would be very useful. To that end, I am
creating a medical device, which will employ one or more servo motors. Is
their unclassified Ada source for these systems?
There is an Ada 83 imaging package. Unfortunately, the Ada that runs the
National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore has not been released.
Thus, a large part of the potential technology transfer benefits from this
very expensive undertaking has been lost.
Bob Leif

Driving Servos (was: Great opportunity for Ada application)

[Warren W. Gay VE3WWG]

Marin David Condic wrote:
> Ada code to control servo motors? Yeah. Unclassified source exists to do
> that. But that doesn't mean that a company would give it to you. Most would
> consider it to be "proprietary" in some way. Besides, the code would likely
> be very specific to the particular servo in question and to the particular
> application.

Unless you are talking about "standard stepping controller chip" hardware,
I doubt that much source code would be useful anyway.

> It depends on what you want. The actual control laws that drives a given
> actuator is typically rather small. You get a request, it does some rate and
> range limiting, you have some kind of transfer function and you generate an
> output. There's a bit more to it when you get into the minor loop closure,
> but that is also very device and application specific. Most of the code goes
> into failure detection and accommodation which again is very device and
> application specific. Beyond that, you have an even larger hunk of code that
> deals with the I/O and scheduling of your control laws - the Operating
> System, if you will. Possibly you can use something off the shelf there, but
> it depends a lot on what the box that is going to hold the whole thing looks
> like.
> 
> MDC

Back when I used to wire MC68705 microcontrollers to old floppy
disk drive stepper motors (5.25 inch at the time), I just used
3 pairs of transistors (2N2222 I think, or maybe it was a
pair of PNP and NPN -- I forget now..) to do the driving,
with 6 pairs inputs to the base of the driver
transistors.

IIRC, most of the floppy seek mechanisms
for 5.25 drives, used a 3 winding stepping motor. The drivers
were a bit more complicated than this, because there are
issues with "back EMF" when the coil winding is switched
off. If you use a straight diode for this, motor speed is
very limited (slow), but with the appropriate use of diode
+ resistor, I think I met an appropriate compromise
(there are more advanced ways to do this "right" however).

The assembly language code had to carefully raise or lower
inputs on those transistors according
to strict guidelines (for example you could not allow
both of the + and - inputs at the same time, since
with my arrangement, the current would short through the top
and bottom pair of drivers, not a healthy event!)  Then there
was timing to consider too, since you cannot always do things
at the speed of software ;-)

I used onboard timer(s), that then provided interrupts
that would indicate when the next "step" was needed etc.
Of course the process of going in one direction or the
other, required some other orchestrations to occur.

The point of this post is really that if you have a fairly
custom driver arrangement, no off the shelf code is likely to
be of much help. Especially if you're dealing with resource
constrained chips like the MC68705 series chips. I believe
the PIC chips are still rather limited, though I've not
kept in touch.

If only I could retire and do fun things like that again..

But it's hard to imagine an Ada95 program fitting into
a 2KB EPROM however..

-- 
Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
http://home.cogeco.ca/~ve3wwg

RE: Driving Servos (was: Great opportunity for Ada application)

[Robert C. Leif]

I was hoping that at least some kind of higher level package could be
created. It does appear that some of the components , possibly in the form
of generics could be created. 
Parenthetically, my present servomotor controller board's software will not
even load. I also have a very expensive CCD camera for my microscope with
signal averaging software that produces artifacts. The commercial software
for both is written in C++. This is why I am an Ada fanatic! I believe that
most of us customers would greatly appreciate and pay for reliable software.
Bob Leif

-----Original Message-----
From: Warren W. Gay VE3WWG [mailto:ve3wwg@cogeco.ca] 
Sent: Friday, February 14, 2003 9:51 AM
To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
Subject: Driving Servos (was: Great opportunity for Ada application)

Marin David Condic wrote:
> Ada code to control servo motors? Yeah. Unclassified source exists to do
> that. But that doesn't mean that a company would give it to you. Most
would
> consider it to be "proprietary" in some way. Besides, the code would
likely
> be very specific to the particular servo in question and to the particular
> application.

Unless you are talking about "standard stepping controller chip" hardware,
I doubt that much source code would be useful anyway.

> It depends on what you want. The actual control laws that drives a given
> actuator is typically rather small. You get a request, it does some rate
and
> range limiting, you have some kind of transfer function and you generate
an
> output. There's a bit more to it when you get into the minor loop closure,
> but that is also very device and application specific. Most of the code
goes
> into failure detection and accommodation which again is very device and
> application specific. Beyond that, you have an even larger hunk of code
that
> deals with the I/O and scheduling of your control laws - the Operating
> System, if you will. Possibly you can use something off the shelf there,
but
> it depends a lot on what the box that is going to hold the whole thing
looks
> like.
> 
> MDC

Back when I used to wire MC68705 microcontrollers to old floppy
disk drive stepper motors (5.25 inch at the time), I just used
3 pairs of transistors (2N2222 I think, or maybe it was a
pair of PNP and NPN -- I forget now..) to do the driving,
with 6 pairs inputs to the base of the driver
transistors.

IIRC, most of the floppy seek mechanisms
for 5.25 drives, used a 3 winding stepping motor. The drivers
were a bit more complicated than this, because there are
issues with "back EMF" when the coil winding is switched
off. If you use a straight diode for this, motor speed is
very limited (slow), but with the appropriate use of diode
+ resistor, I think I met an appropriate compromise
(there are more advanced ways to do this "right" however).

The assembly language code had to carefully raise or lower
inputs on those transistors according
to strict guidelines (for example you could not allow
both of the + and - inputs at the same time, since
with my arrangement, the current would short through the top
and bottom pair of drivers, not a healthy event!)  Then there
was timing to consider too, since you cannot always do things
at the speed of software ;-)

I used onboard timer(s), that then provided interrupts
that would indicate when the next "step" was needed etc.
Of course the process of going in one direction or the
other, required some other orchestrations to occur.

The point of this post is really that if you have a fairly
custom driver arrangement, no off the shelf code is likely to
be of much help. Especially if you're dealing with resource
constrained chips like the MC68705 series chips. I believe
the PIC chips are still rather limited, though I've not
kept in touch.

If only I could retire and do fun things like that again..

But it's hard to imagine an Ada95 program fitting into
a 2KB EPROM however..

-- 
Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
http://home.cogeco.ca/~ve3wwg

Re: Driving Servos (was: Great opportunity for Ada application)

[Bernd Trog]

"Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" <ve3wwg@cogeco.ca> wrote:

> But it's hard to imagine an Ada95 program fitting into
> a 2KB EPROM however..

Well, its all about the runtime library...

When you say 'pragma No_Run_Time' and provide
your own Put_Line(S : in String) a "Hello World" shrinks to:

>avr-size hello_world.elf
   text    data     bss     dec     hex filename
    326      16       1     343     157 hello_world.elf

Which leaves 1.7 kbyte available for usefull stuff on my 
current uC, for example.

Bernd

Re: Driving Servos (was: Great opportunity for Ada application)

[Warren W. Gay VE3WWG]

Bernd Trog wrote:
> "Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" <ve3wwg@cogeco.ca> wrote:
>>But it's hard to imagine an Ada95 program fitting into
>>a 2KB EPROM however..
> 
> Well, its all about the runtime library...
> 
> When you say 'pragma No_Run_Time' and provide
> your own Put_Line(S : in String) a "Hello World" shrinks to:
> 
>>avr-size hello_world.elf
> 
>    text    data     bss     dec     hex filename
>     326      16       1     343     157 hello_world.elf
> 
> Which leaves 1.7 kbyte available for usefull stuff on my 
> current uC, for example.
> 
> Bernd

My point simply was that there isn't much EPROM to
play with at a high level. Depending upon the assignment's
complexity however, as you have pointed out, it isn't
impossible.

-- 
Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
http://home.cogeco.ca/~ve3wwg

Re: Driving Servos (was: Great opportunity for Ada application)

[Jeffrey Carter]

Warren W. Gay VE3WWG wrote:
> Bernd Trog wrote:
> 
>> "Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" <ve3wwg@cogeco.ca> wrote:
>>
>>> But it's hard to imagine an Ada95 program fitting into
>>> a 2KB EPROM however..
>>
>> Well, its all about the runtime library...
> 
> My point simply was that there isn't much EPROM to
> play with at a high level. Depending upon the assignment's
> complexity however, as you have pointed out, it isn't
> impossible.

You guys should review the "Ada beats assembler" article from Tartan.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"Hello! Smelly English K...niggets."
Monty Python & the Holy Grail

Re: Driving Servos (was: Great opportunity for Ada application)

[Vinzent Hoefler]

Jeffrey Carter wrote:

> You guys should review the "Ada beats assembler" article from Tartan.

Any URL?

On google I couldn't find anything that looked like what you seem to 
mean. Sounds interesting, though.


Vinzent.

-- 
"If God had wanted us to use the metric system, Jesus would have had 10
apostles."

Re: Driving Servos (was: Great opportunity for Ada application)

[DPH]

On Wed, 19 Feb 2003 13:35:58 -0500, Vinzent Hoefler
<ada.rocks@jlfencey.com> wrote:

>Jeffrey Carter wrote:
>
>> You guys should review the "Ada beats assembler" article from Tartan.
>
>Any URL?
>
>On google I couldn't find anything that looked like what you seem to 
>mean. Sounds interesting, though.
>
>
>Vinzent.


http://adahome.com/Ammo/Stories/Tartan-Realtime.html

Re: Driving Servos (was: Great opportunity for Ada application)

[Vinzent Hoefler]

DPH wrote:

> http://adahome.com/Ammo/Stories/Tartan-Realtime.html

Thanks for the link. :-)


Vinzent.

-- 
Evangelists do it with Him watching.

Re: Driving Servos (was: Great opportunity for Ada application)

[Jeffrey Carter]

Vinzent Hoefler wrote:
> Jeffrey Carter wrote:
> 
> 
>>You guys should review the "Ada beats assembler" article from Tartan.
> 
> 
> Any URL?
> 
> On google I couldn't find anything that looked like what you seem to 
> mean. Sounds interesting, though.

This was Ada 83, reported in the late 80s or early 90s. I don't think 
the article is available on line.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"I blow my nose on you."
Monty Python & the Holy Grail

Re: Driving Servos (was: Great opportunity for Ada application)

[Martin Dowie]

Jeffrey Carter <jrcarter@acm.org> wrote in message news:<3E5432A3.9090306@acm.org>...
> Vinzent Hoefler wrote:
> > Jeffrey Carter wrote:
> > 
> > 
> >>You guys should review the "Ada beats assembler" article from Tartan.
> > 
> > 
> > Any URL?
> > 
> > On google I couldn't find anything that looked like what you seem to 
> > mean. Sounds interesting, though.
> 
> This was Ada 83, reported in the late 80s or early 90s. I don't think 
> the article is available on line.

It's here:

http://www.adahome.com/Ammo/Stories/Tartan-Realtime.html

Re: Driving Servos (was: Great opportunity for Ada application)

[Jeffrey Carter]

Martin Dowie wrote:
> Jeffrey Carter <jrcarter@acm.org> wrote in message news:<3E5432A3.9090306@acm.org>...
> 
>>This was Ada 83, reported in the late 80s or early 90s. I don't think 
>>the article is available on line.
> 
> It's here:
> 
> http://www.adahome.com/Ammo/Stories/Tartan-Realtime.html

No, that's not it, but it references the article, P.K. Lawlis and T.W. 
Elam, "Ada Outperforms Assembly: A Case Study." Proceedings of TRI-Ada, 
1992. My memory is that it was in Ada Letters, but my memory may be 
faulty, or the article may have been reprinted in Ada Letters.

The software was severely restricted in size and had very hard real-time 
requirments (microseconds, IIRC). The developers assumed that only 
assembler could meet those requirements. The assembler met the 
requirements only after a team of experts spent months hand optimizeing 
the code. The Tartan compiler was able to produce faster code that met 
the size requirements.

TI bought Tartan for its C compilers, and sold the Ada compilers to 
DDCI. I think you can still buy the Tartan Ada-83 compilers from DDCI. I 
don't know if Tartan's optimization techniques have been used in DDCI's 
Ada-95 compilers.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"Monsieur Arthur King, who has the brain of a duck, you know."
Monty Python & the Holy Grail

Re: Driving Servos (was: Great opportunity for Ada application)

[Martin Dowie]

"Jeffrey Carter" <jrcarter@acm.org> wrote in message
news:3E55110B.7020302@acm.org...
> > http://www.adahome.com/Ammo/Stories/Tartan-Realtime.html
>
> No, that's not it, but it references the article, P.K. Lawlis and T.W.
> Elam, "Ada Outperforms Assembly: A Case Study." Proceedings of TRI-Ada,
> 1992. My memory is that it was in Ada Letters, but my memory may be
> faulty, or the article may have been reprinted in Ada Letters.

If you have a SIGAda membership you can get it via here:

http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/143557.143752

Re: Great opportunity for Ada application

[David Marceau]

It seems the best horses are on 1)Lockheed Martin and 2)Boeing without
any competition.  I saw some fly by wire stuff uav/utv on tv the other
night on discovery concerning the making of the X-planes.

Whatever is competing, I think the config with the most strategic impact
will win and not the cheapest to mass-produce price.
I also think the config with the free non-used non-competition bonus
features will also add value if there is a tie :)  The rules are not
clear as to what happens if there is a tie.

Notice the section of COMPETITION AND REPAIRS:
"
Competition
The goal of this competition is for the race vehicle to complete the
course as fast as possible. 
Interfering with other race vehicles will not be allowed.  The following
will result in the
disqualification of a contestant:
Intentionally interfering with competing Race or Chase vehicles 
Intentionally interfering with competing operators 
Intentionally interfering, spoofing, jamming, or disturbing
communications used by
competitors or the race organizers 
Intentionally altering the terrain with the purpose of making it more
difficult for
competitors 

Refueling and Repairs
Autonomous refueling and repairs will be allowed at a checkpoint.  That
is, equipment for
refurbishing the race vehicle must be set-up at the check point prior to
the start of the race.  Other
than the E-Stop, no human (or other biological entity) may send commands
to or otherwise control
the equipment once the race begins.
"
Obviously fuel cells are important here :)

Can't interfere with other cars....hmmm I thought all is fair in love
and war.
Zapping another car before, during and after the competition without
getting caught seems to be still legal.
It's like doping in the olympics :)  All the intention disqualification
capabilities could be considered as an added-value bonus feature if
there is a tie.  If there is a tie, these added features could prove
their worth in the second round :)

A Top of the line utv system 
----------------------------
-spark, openravenscar(pedal to the metal solution foggy for me but I'm
sure ada gurus out there will opt for this)
-uav-lets or robofly-lets spurting out of the atv all individually
monitored via the atv to web-front-end.  This could be critical for the
last five seconds of allowed off-ground uav time if we consider a
uav-let/robofly as part of the uav :)  Nothing stops us from propelling
the uav-let as a projectile for the last five seconds to get to the
destination target :)

A not so thorough vision of what a econo-system could have
----------------------------------------------------------
aws(web front end).  The more creative/more value/better looking, the
more probably the ada team will win.  I have ideas up the yin yang for
this.(although most communication is not allowed does not mean it cannot
be implemented and not used during the competition).
or gtkada(non-web front end)
ada2nqc(control on-vehicle robot adamindstorm for wheel turning and
other motor controls maybe)
ada2nqc(maybe also for the wireless communication between on-vehicle and
web-front-end)
A#(.NET)/jgnat/j2me, adaCOM (control wireless communication between
on-vehicle and web-front-end) mix of commercial off the shelf and
open-source here maybe :)
Obviously other sensors/actuators will be here to.

That said I'll volunteer and contribute to any solution an ada team
would propose and learn from it as a gesture of good will to get an ada
coder job as an end result.  One catch: I am Canadian citizen.

Cheers,
David Marceau

David Botton wrote:
> 
> If some one wants to flip the bill, I'm in :-)
> 
> David Botton
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jerry Petrey @raytheon.com>" <"jdpetrey<NOSPAM>
> Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
> To: <comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, February 12, 2003 12:09 PM
> Subject: Great opportunity for Ada application
> 
> > DARPA is sponsoring a competition with a one million dollar prize for an
> > autonomous vehicle to transverse a course between L.A. and Las Vegas in
> 2004.
> > This would be a great opportunity for an Ada controlled entry.
> > See http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/ for details.
> > Perhaps there is some small company around that would like to undertake
> this
> > challenge and make a name for themselves and show what Ada can do.
> >
> >
> > Jerry
> > --
> > --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> -------
> >
> > -- 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
> > --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> -------
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > comp.lang.ada mailing list
> > comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
> > http://ada.eu.org/mailman/listinfo/comp.lang.ada

Re: Great opportunity for Ada application

[James S. Rogers]

"David Marceau" <davidmarceau@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:3E4AAD59.BB77642@sympatico.ca...
> It seems the best horses are on 1)Lockheed Martin and 2)Boeing without
> any competition.  I saw some fly by wire stuff uav/utv on tv the other
> night on discovery concerning the making of the X-planes.
>
> Whatever is competing, I think the config with the most strategic impact
> will win and not the cheapest to mass-produce price.
> I also think the config with the free non-used non-competition bonus
> features will also add value if there is a tie :)  The rules are not
> clear as to what happens if there is a tie.
>
> Notice the section of COMPETITION AND REPAIRS:
> "
> Competition
> The goal of this competition is for the race vehicle to complete the
> course as fast as possible.
> Interfering with other race vehicles will not be allowed.  The following
> will result in the
> disqualification of a contestant:
> Intentionally interfering with competing Race or Chase vehicles
> Intentionally interfering with competing operators
> Intentionally interfering, spoofing, jamming, or disturbing
> communications used by
> competitors or the race organizers
> Intentionally altering the terrain with the purpose of making it more
> difficult for
> competitors
>
> Refueling and Repairs
> Autonomous refueling and repairs will be allowed at a checkpoint.  That
> is, equipment for
> refurbishing the race vehicle must be set-up at the check point prior to
> the start of the race.  Other
> than the E-Stop, no human (or other biological entity) may send commands
> to or otherwise control
> the equipment once the race begins.
> "
> Obviously fuel cells are important here :)
>
> Can't interfere with other cars....hmmm I thought all is fair in love
> and war.
> Zapping another car before, during and after the competition without
> getting caught seems to be still legal.
> It's like doping in the olympics :)  All the intention disqualification
> capabilities could be considered as an added-value bonus feature if
> there is a tie.  If there is a tie, these added features could prove
> their worth in the second round :)
>
> A Top of the line utv system
> ----------------------------
> -spark, openravenscar(pedal to the metal solution foggy for me but I'm
> sure ada gurus out there will opt for this)
> -uav-lets or robofly-lets spurting out of the atv all individually
> monitored via the atv to web-front-end.  This could be critical for the
> last five seconds of allowed off-ground uav time if we consider a
> uav-let/robofly as part of the uav :)  Nothing stops us from propelling
> the uav-let as a projectile for the last five seconds to get to the
> destination target :)
>
> A not so thorough vision of what a econo-system could have
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> aws(web front end).  The more creative/more value/better looking, the
> more probably the ada team will win.  I have ideas up the yin yang for
> this.(although most communication is not allowed does not mean it cannot
> be implemented and not used during the competition).
> or gtkada(non-web front end)
> ada2nqc(control on-vehicle robot adamindstorm for wheel turning and
> other motor controls maybe)
> ada2nqc(maybe also for the wireless communication between on-vehicle and
> web-front-end)
> A#(.NET)/jgnat/j2me, adaCOM (control wireless communication between
> on-vehicle and web-front-end) mix of commercial off the shelf and
> open-source here maybe :)
> Obviously other sensors/actuators will be here to.
>
> That said I'll volunteer and contribute to any solution an ada team
> would propose and learn from it as a gesture of good will to get an ada
> coder job as an end result.  One catch: I am Canadian citizen.

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

UAV experience will help (such as that available to Lockheed and
Boeing) but is not critical.

It will take more than one year to develop the software and hardware
for such an effort. Note that the primary difficulty is not in the
vehicle control software. That can be handled relatively easily.
The difficulty is in the autonomous control system generating the
vehicle control inputs, and reading the vehicle status outputs.

Sensors needed for this include (as a minimum) a gps receiver,
video sensors to determine the edge of a road or path,
ladar or sonor detector to identify obstacles, and a pan/tilt/bearing
sensor to determine vehicle orientation.

You need to be able to accurately describe the course to the
vehicle, giving it enough intelligence to find an optimal path
through the terrain. You need to be able to accurately identify
the vehicle's current position at all times during the race.
You will need to employ a Kalman filter merging all input data
(position, heading, terrain, obstacles, fuel consumption, engine
temperature, etc.) to determine best possible course.

I assume this will be an off-road race to avoid hazards with
non-race participants. If not, you must be able to program
your vehicle to obey all applicable traffic rules and regulations.

You will need to determine how you are going to control and
instrument your vehicle. Most existing ground vehicles are not
yet completely drive by wire. This means you may have to
install and calibrate actuators. Actuators that have been proven
for ground vehicle control are available from Omnitech Robotics,
Inc. Those actuators communicate using the CAN (Controller
Area Network) bus developed by Bosch in Germany.

You will need time to test your system. There are a lot of
variables to get right in an autonomous control system.

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

Re: Great opportunity for Ada application

[Jerry Petrey]

"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
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-- 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
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Great opportunity for Ada application

[James S. Rogers]

"James S. Rogers" <jimmaureenrogers@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:58D2a.49683$zF6.3324539@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
> "David Marceau" <davidmarceau@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
> news:3E4AAD59.BB77642@sympatico.ca...
> > It seems the best horses are on 1)Lockheed Martin and 2)Boeing without
> > any competition.  I saw some fly by wire stuff uav/utv on tv the other
> > night on discovery concerning the making of the X-planes.
> >
> > Whatever is competing, I think the config with the most strategic impact
> > will win and not the cheapest to mass-produce price.
> > I also think the config with the free non-used non-competition bonus
> > features will also add value if there is a tie :)  The rules are not
> > clear as to what happens if there is a tie.
> >
> > Notice the section of COMPETITION AND REPAIRS:
> > "
> > Competition
> > The goal of this competition is for the race vehicle to complete the
> > course as fast as possible.
> > Interfering with other race vehicles will not be allowed.  The following
> > will result in the
> > disqualification of a contestant:
> > Intentionally interfering with competing Race or Chase vehicles
> > Intentionally interfering with competing operators
> > Intentionally interfering, spoofing, jamming, or disturbing
> > communications used by
> > competitors or the race organizers
> > Intentionally altering the terrain with the purpose of making it more
> > difficult for
> > competitors
> >
> > Refueling and Repairs
> > Autonomous refueling and repairs will be allowed at a checkpoint.  That
> > is, equipment for
> > refurbishing the race vehicle must be set-up at the check point prior to
> > the start of the race.  Other
> > than the E-Stop, no human (or other biological entity) may send commands
> > to or otherwise control
> > the equipment once the race begins.
> > "
> > Obviously fuel cells are important here :)
> >
> > Can't interfere with other cars....hmmm I thought all is fair in love
> > and war.
> > Zapping another car before, during and after the competition without
> > getting caught seems to be still legal.
> > It's like doping in the olympics :)  All the intention disqualification
> > capabilities could be considered as an added-value bonus feature if
> > there is a tie.  If there is a tie, these added features could prove
> > their worth in the second round :)

If anyone is curious about what might go into such a system, from
the software point of view, please look at
http://www.jauswg.org/baseline
Click on the link to the reference architecture.
This will connect you to a MS Word document describing the
current software architecture encouraged by the U.S. Department
of Defense for robotic systems.

As a side note, Boeing is currently looking for bids on several
unmanned ground vehicles for various uses. Boeing is requiring
adherence to the JAUS Reference Architecture mentioned
above. One vehicle, a 5 ton truck with sensors and other
gadgets, has a planned 39 month development cycle.
A small company with deep pockets, but lacking the
bureaucratic overhead of Boeing might be able to build
a similar system in about two years.

Jim Rogers

Re: Great opportunity for Ada application

[Marin David Condic]

Small companies don't generally have the resources to dedicate to something
like this. It would take some non-trivial dedication of personnel and
capital equipment just in order to play the game and those folks aren't
going to be generating revenue. A company like GM could possibly throw a few
million at some engineers and let them play games with the hope of possibly
developing some useful new technology & getting a little good press, but
"Bob's Control Computers" would have a hard time going that route. Are there
any larger-scale automotive companies using Ada?

MDC
--
======================================================================
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I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
My project is: http://www.jsf.mil/

Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ a c m . o r g

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Jerry Petrey @raytheon.com> <"jdpetrey<NOSPAM> wrote in message
news:3E4A7FDB.3C96D63A@raytheon.com...
> DARPA is sponsoring a competition with a one million dollar prize for an
> autonomous vehicle to transverse a course between L.A. and Las Vegas in
2004.
> This would be a great opportunity for an Ada controlled entry.
> See http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/ for details.
> Perhaps there is some small company around that would like to undertake
this
> challenge and make a name for themselves and show what Ada can do.
>

Re: Great opportunity for Ada application

[Jerry Petrey]

Marin David Condic wrote:

> Small companies don't generally have the resources to dedicate to something
> like this. It would take some non-trivial dedication of personnel and
> capital equipment just in order to play the game and those folks aren't
> going to be generating revenue. A company like GM could possibly throw a few
> million at some engineers and let them play games with the hope of possibly
> developing some useful new technology & getting a little good press, but
> "Bob's Control Computers" would have a hard time going that route. Are there
> any larger-scale automotive companies using Ada?
>
> MDC
> --
>

That's true Marin; however I know of one robotics club in Michigan that is
planning
an entry (probably not in Ada, however). You are allowed to have sponsors and
display their logos so it could be good publicity.  For what Nike spends on one
Super Bowl ad would do very nicely -  I can see it now : "Ada - Just Do It!".

Jerry
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-- 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
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------