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I rode a robot car

Tags: airplane, boss, burning crust of flies, cmu, delay, gm, robot car, robot city, titan racing

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Sunday was the worst day I've had in a long time. Monday, by contrast, was the best day I think I will have in a while.

GM was nice enough to fly out Jesse Ferguson and me to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for their team's qualifying tests for the DARPA Grand Challenge. The flight was supposed to leave Seattle at a balmy 5:20 AM, so I camped out on the couch for the 5-ish hours of sleep I'd get before we had to leave.

I made sure to leave the lights on, and check the time frequently as I slept so that I would not wake up feeling tired. That, at least, worked.

We had figured that we wouldn't need to leave a lot of time before our flight because it was such an early one. That, as it turned out, was a big mistake. When we got to the ticketing desk to check in, we found that everyone had figured just as we had, and come at the last minute, forming a long line at the check-in desk.

The line seemed to be moving smoothly enough, so I didn't worry - I calculated a time estimate and I thought we'd be able to make the flight, but when we got to the ticket counter the guy said we were too late. He was nice enough, though, to reschedule us for a flight about two hours later.

Great, we said, now that that's gone wrong, what else could happen?

Jesse and I waited at the airport playing Plasma Pong, a fluid-dynamics version of the old-school Pong. It's pretty addictive and the time went by quickly.

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There's also this sweet laser prism sculpture in the Seatac Airport. One of the things I love about this airport is that it's filled with awesome artwork.

The flight was supposed to stop in Phoenix for a half hour (where we got lunch) and then continue on to Philadelphia, where we would then transfer to a flight to Pittsburgh.

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On the way to Philadelphia Jesse and I managed to get a whole row to ourselves, and this small airline pillow.

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I love the shapes the ice crystals make on the airplane windows.

We were seated in the exit row, too, which meant more leg room in exchange for knowing all the safety procedures in the case of an emergency landing (and having non-reclining seats!).

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Though we couldn't figure out what this diagram meant. Something about the ripcords for the inflatable slides, but are we supposed to tie them to the wing?

The flight landed, and started taxiing to the terminal in Philadelphia. We only had a few minutes to catch our connecting flight, so we wanted to get out as soon as possible.

Fate, it seems, had other plans. There was some issue with the leaving plane, and we had to sit there in the plane for too long a time. We missed the flight by two minutes and had to reschedule again - this time it was for a flight at 6:30 AM the next day. The folks at US Airways were very helpful, despite a fairly cold manner - I'm wondering whether I induced their manner with a hurried attitude, though I was using a large amount of effort to suppress feelings of frustration.

Anyhow, they gave us hotel vouchers for a free night at a hotel plus transportation. We checked in, dropped off our stuff, and had a dinner of delicious authentic Philadelphia cheesesteaks (we were in Philadelphia!).

Then it was off to bed for another 5 hours of lights-on half-sleep. That kind of sleep is peculiar - you wake up feeling rested but you can't persist on it for too long. Two nights in a row like that was pushing it. Got to have deep sleep if you want to stay satisfied for very long.

Did I mention that the airline kept my checked bag and wouldn't let me get it until the following morning? I couldn't brush my teeth and had to deal with a vigorous water-rinsing. I did shower though. That was nice, because there weren't any dead bugs in the shower. That and showers are nice.

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Apparently sleeping with the lights on isn't the thing to do when you're in a hotel near a bug-filled swamp. Even with the doors and windows closed I woke up to a great many dead flies over the sink (whose light I left on). It was gross, but I had more important things to deal with.

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Heading outside with our stuff to wait for the airport shuttle, we saw another cloud of flies hovering over the lights they use to accent the hotel face. We were delighted to see that the light was covered in a burning crust of flies. Awesome!

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Having arrived at the airport very early, we set up shop next to an AT&T Public Phone 2000! because it had an outlet next to it. When did this pass for cutting-edge technology?

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There was also this cute little sparrow trapped in the terminal. People were giving it crumbs and water and I was surprised to see that it appeared to have learned to be cute in order to make people give it food. The little thing actually hovers in front of your face like a hummingbird; it's the cutest thing EVER.

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Oh wait, you're here for the robot car, right? GM's Lisa Bader greeted us cheerily as we emerged triumphantly from the Baggage Claim area in Pittsburgh. We spent an hour in pleasant conversation and slightly-less-pleasant morning traffic heading into Pittsburgh proper.

We reached Robot City (CMU's abandoned steel factory turned robotic research facility) in short order, and Jesse and I switched into full Bleeding Edge Video Crew mode, with Jesse hosting the segments and me filming, mastering the focus, zoom, and iris rings for optimal video. We shot in HD and the videos will be up pretty soon over at Gear Live's The Bleeding Edge video podcast.

The DARPA people had arrived and set up various tests for CMU's affectionately named robot car Boss. Tests included straight driving, road following, turns, collision avoidance, and 4-way stop tests with other human-driven cars. It was cool, though each test took a while to set up. We've got footage of it all and that will be among the videos posted.

What was really cool was when we found out we could take a ride in the robot car while it was in full automatic mode. We jumped at the opportunity! That's all on video too.

The whole back storage area behind the seats was filled with racks upon racks of computer equipment - they had to augment the car's air conditioning to take care of all the heat.

The ride was quite bumpy - they had optimized the car to spend as little time making maneuvers as possible, not to drive smoothly, though they assured me that it would be just a little tweak to make it drive smoothly if they wanted to.

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The car is covered with all sorts of radar and laser scanners, which it uses to make sense of the road around it.

We then visited the Robot City Roundhouse, a converted train roundhouse where all the CMU robots are constructed.

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It's a beautiful rustic building, looking almost completely abandoned from the outside.

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On the inside, though, it's a huge robot workshop.

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Workbenches full of computers and parts line the walls.

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There are even piles of miscellaneous train parts lying around.

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We got to ride the Segway X2's that CMU bought to transport their students back and forth from the main campus. They go off-road and they feel wicked fast when you're really leaning into them.

All in all, it was an amazing time. The CMU guys were great hosts and it was exciting to hear all the details on the technology.