Micro-management
DISCLAIMER: the opinionated political satire expressed here is in no way affiliated or aligned with the views of Cornell University.
DISCLAIMER: the technical investigations of this team should in no way be perceived as anything but a dedicated and rigorous research effort. Please do not reproduce or otherwise make available any portion of the material found within unless permission is obtained from the author first.
Everybody who follows this little amalgamation of words with any kind of regularity already knows that we've been systematically rewriting all our systems for competition. The move from rev. 1.0 to rev 2.0 (or 1.1, or whatever you want to call it) in the software is an important one, because it lets you fix all the assumptions that turn out not to work so well in real life. The latest system to receive some good old-fashioned Team Cornell TLC is the computer rack, because we don't want to go driving around too much longer with wooden 2x6's supporting a rack of umpteen bajillion computers. Going along with that is rev. 2.0 of the microcontrollers, which talk to all the sensors on the car and ferry information onto the car's network for the computers. This year the microcontrollers are all synchronized together in something like a vehicle heartbeat, which allows us to get excellent synchronization across the sensors. You wouldn't think timing would be that much of a problem, but then again you probably haven't realized that even a single minus sign in the code sends the car off the road. In fact, just about everything sends an autonomous car off the road, so it's often necessary to invoke the gods of good fortune and fast reflexes when the car goes out. Anyway, the new microcontrollers all flash tiny lights to this heartbeat, and they stack up into something that could only have come from Star Trek:
By the way, one of our own opened a *.gif file casually yesterday, only to find a popup message box saying something about "Elmo" and no image. If you ever want to watch six terrified guys simultaneously yank plugs out of their computers, that's certainly one way to do it. It turned out not to be a virus, but I think it would be funny if some team had to withdraw from the competition because their car got spywared.
And one more thing... DARPA is announcing the list of semi-finalists (those invited to the National Qualifying Event) on Thursday 8/09/07 at 1:45 pm. Start biting your fingernails, and wish us luck!
DISCLAIMER: the technical investigations of this team should in no way be perceived as anything but a dedicated and rigorous research effort. Please do not reproduce or otherwise make available any portion of the material found within unless permission is obtained from the author first.
Everybody who follows this little amalgamation of words with any kind of regularity already knows that we've been systematically rewriting all our systems for competition. The move from rev. 1.0 to rev 2.0 (or 1.1, or whatever you want to call it) in the software is an important one, because it lets you fix all the assumptions that turn out not to work so well in real life. The latest system to receive some good old-fashioned Team Cornell TLC is the computer rack, because we don't want to go driving around too much longer with wooden 2x6's supporting a rack of umpteen bajillion computers. Going along with that is rev. 2.0 of the microcontrollers, which talk to all the sensors on the car and ferry information onto the car's network for the computers. This year the microcontrollers are all synchronized together in something like a vehicle heartbeat, which allows us to get excellent synchronization across the sensors. You wouldn't think timing would be that much of a problem, but then again you probably haven't realized that even a single minus sign in the code sends the car off the road. In fact, just about everything sends an autonomous car off the road, so it's often necessary to invoke the gods of good fortune and fast reflexes when the car goes out. Anyway, the new microcontrollers all flash tiny lights to this heartbeat, and they stack up into something that could only have come from Star Trek:
By the way, one of our own opened a *.gif file casually yesterday, only to find a popup message box saying something about "Elmo" and no image. If you ever want to watch six terrified guys simultaneously yank plugs out of their computers, that's certainly one way to do it. It turned out not to be a virus, but I think it would be funny if some team had to withdraw from the competition because their car got spywared.And one more thing... DARPA is announcing the list of semi-finalists (those invited to the National Qualifying Event) on Thursday 8/09/07 at 1:45 pm. Start biting your fingernails, and wish us luck!
posted by iceman at 9:25 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home