Semi-autonomous motorcar

From Arrow Electronics

Sam Schmidt is a former Indy racecar driver who was in a driving accident in 2000 and since then he has been a quadriplegic. Arrow Electronics approached him in 2013 to participate in their project of designing a car that he would be able to drive. The project, known as the SAM Project (Semi-Autonomous Motorcar), has developed to the point where Schmidt has driven a number of times.

In May 2014 he tried the first version of the car, in which his head functioned as a joystick. Further developments lead to his driving the very curvy 1.9-mile (3-kilometer) street course at the Long Beach Grand Prix in April 2015.

The project website: http://www.arrowsamcar.com/

On the project website there is a particularly useful section "The technology of tomorrow" (click Explore the car). There are very clear visuals and short descriptions of how each part of the car works.

Explore the car: http://www.arrow.com/sam/thecar/

The latest version of the car uses four infrared cameras mounted to the windshield that track left and right movements of Schmidt's head through reflective markers. The information gets sent to a computer in the back of the car that calculates where to steer the car. Acceleration and braking is done with "sip and puff" technology similar to wheelchairs in which sipping on a straw slows the car down and blowing into it makes the car go faster.

Students can compare these developments with earlier versions of the car.

There are many articles about this technology. Here are three that I found interesting:

From Wired: This Quadriplegic Racer Drives a Corvette by Tilting His Head
http://www.wired.com/2014/05/sam-schmidt-quadriplegic-driver/

From Gizmodo: A Quadriplegic Racer Will Steer a Stingray With His Head at the Indy 500
http://gizmodo.com/a-quadriplegic-racer-will-steer-a-stingray-with-his-hea-1575118033

From SciTech: Quadriplegic Drives Racecar Using Aerospace Technology
http://www.aiaa-scitech.org/Forum.aspx?id=23268

DARPA Robotics Challenge winner

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the USA created a robotics challenge in 2011 to encourage innovators to design and create a robot that could be used for rescue purposes in all types of disasters. Since then there have been 3 competitions, and 23 semi-finalists competed in the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals, held 4-6 June 2015 in Pomona, California. It involved $3.5 million in prizes for the top 3 teams.

The DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) website: http://www.theroboticschallenge.org/

The description from the website: "The DRC is a competition of robot systems and software teams vying to develop robots capable of assisting humans in responding to natural and man-made disasters. It was designed to be extremely difficult. Participating teams, representing some of the most advanced robotics research and development organizations in the world, are collaborating and innovating on a very short timeline to develop the hardware, software, sensors, and human-machine control interfaces that will enable their robots to complete a series of challenge tasks selected by DARPA for their relevance to disaster response."

The 8 tasks were chosen as being relevant to disaster response:

1. Drive a vehicle (same vehicle type as in Trials).
2. Egress from vehicle.
3. Open door and travel through opening.
4. Open valve (similar to one of 3 valves in Trials).
5. Use a cutting tool to cut a hole in a wall (similar to one of the two tools and the wall in Trials).
6. Surprise manipulation task (not disclosed until Finals).
7. Traverse rubble - Either cross debris field (by moving the debris or traversing it, similar to Trials) or negotiate irregular terrain (similar to Trials).
8. Climb stairs (fewer steps and less steep than in Trials).

The DRC website has videos of the competing robots performing the variety of tasks (successfully and unsuccessfully), in addition to information about each team and the robots.

DRC videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/DARPAtv

The top finalists are:

• Team Kaist (Republic of Korea)
• Team IHMC Robotics (USA)
• Tartan Rescue (USA)

The winner of the competition, Team Kaist, won with a robot called DRC-Hubo, an adaptable multifunctional device with the ability to transform from a walking robot to rolling on 4 wheels by bending and using wheels incorporated into its knees.

DRC-Hubo from Team Kaist

The section of the website for Team Kaist has a variety of videos, ranging from 1:02 to the "Full Video" (9:46) titled Team Preparation. There is no speaking in the videos, but they show the winning robot completing the variety of tasks (with background music).

Team Kaist section: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4R1heJq6gtqd7fSUP6ALow

There are such sections for each of the 23 competitors.

By the time the competition took place and the winners announced, my academic semester was almost over. So I was not able to use much of the excellent material on the DRC site. However, my students brainstormed ideas of which tasks they thought a rescue robot should be able to complete. Then they looked at pictures of the robot entrants, and discussed which ones they thought would win. Next semester I will use the technical material for a few robots to have students guess which ones were more successful in completing the tasks.

Geeky Gadgets website

The website logo

It's always useful to find websites that have texts, visuals, videos and other information that can be used as classroom material. One site I have found is called Geeky Gadgets, which - as the name indicates - focuses on a wide variety of innovations and devices in different fields of technology.

From the website: "Geeky Gadgets is designed to provide up to the minute daily technology news on the latest advances in the technology sector including software, hardware and gadgets from around the world. Geeky Gadgets features in-depth reviews on the latest devices with impartial coverage of the features and developments of new technology."


Link to the website: http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/

The site is divided into 7 sections:

• Home
• Apple
• Android
• Deals
• Gadgets
• Technology
• Hardware

The section Gadgets gives reviews and opinions of different devices, while Technology seems to be more like news coverage.

The texts are good sources of process descriptions, information about innovations, examples of opinion, comparisons and visuals.

Many texts are fairly short, and written in an informal, idiomatic style. My students like to focus on idioms and slang because they feel it will help them speak more like a "real" English speaker.

Examples of this language from  a short article about Sony's Smartband 2 Companion App:

• (the innovation) recently made an appearance
• (someone) jumped the gun
• the folks
• managed to grab
• the new wearable
• there's no word about (the launch)
• ..., but judging by (the leak),
• We'll update you

Link to this article: http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/sony-smartband-2-companion-app-launches-in-google-play-store-new-smartband-2-launch-imminent-05-06-2015/

Many of these examples were new for my students, and some words are used in a way they didn't realize was possible. Since many of the articles are short, they seem easier for students to read, and the new vocabulary is then not so intimidating.

What is it called?

I found an interesting article that related to a problem that came up in one of my classes recently. Students mentioned that sometimes they didn't know what an item was called in English, and they didn't know how to find out. This lead to the realization that this also happens in their own language.

The article I found is called, How to Google Something You Don't Know How to Describe. I had intended for students to read it and see that the author had the problem of now knowing what certain items were called in English - his own language.The article includes some pictures as examples, so I showed them to students to see what they were called in their own language. Since they didn't know, this started an interesting discussion of how they could find out.

Link to the article: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/03/how-to-google-something-you-dont-know-how-to-describe/387889/

The article mentions a number of websites for this purpose:

• What is this thing called: http://whatisthisthingcalled.com/
• Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing/
• Superfish: http://users.tpg.com.au/j_birch/plugins/superfish/
• Quora: http://www.quora.com/

The students became interested in checking these websites, in particular the first one. People post pictures of an item and ask users if they know what it is and what it is used for. My students thought it would be a good idea to use this for various pieces of equipment used in technology fields as a way of learning what it is called and what it does.

I told them to let the group know if they find other ways of learning what something is called, so we could start a bank of ideas. I think the websites themselves are also useful for further reference work that students might need in their studies and future careers.