Engineering team driven to create
By Wafiqah Basrai
May 29, 2008 11:33 p.m.
Andrew Chao placed the two-foot-long car, covered in green circuit boards, on a line of wire and off the car went ““ no motor, no controller.
Chao, a fourth-year electrical engineering student, was demonstrating one of the self-driving cars he and 11 of his teammates created to enter into an annual contest Natcar, sponsored by UC Davis and held last Friday.
The post-contest demonstration was held on Thursday to show the public and sponsors what the team had created, as well as their progress and future plans.
The team, which is made up of students from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, an electrical engineering student group, entered four cars in the contest that they designed and programmed from start to finish.
“It challenged undergraduate students to build an autonomous race car,” said Karen Nguyen, the team’s project manager.
The team’s fastest car came in eighth place, but all four of the cars made it to the finish line, which was quite an achievement for the team. Fifty percent of cars do not even make it that far, Nguyen said.
UC Berkeley’s team captured places one through six and UC Davis came finished in seventh place. A total of seven universities participated in the competition.
The car is designed so that it is run by three sensors, which are on the front of the car. The sensors detect the magnetic field off the wire, which is covered with tape, and the car processes the signal and makes decisions on how to follow it. A critical part of the car is the software, which essentially makes the car run.
Preparation to create the car started in the summer, when the team came up with proposals. Things picked up in the fall as the team recruited and trained new members.
This year, the team stressed training as a way to strengthen the group, Nguyen said. Because the project is very technical and engineering students do not actually take such technical classes until their junior year, Nguyen said training is very important.
“What’s unique about this program is that we have a lot of young members and we train them,” she said. “These are the guys that are going to be carrying the team next year.”
William Lu, a second-year electrical engineering student, was a freshman when he joined the group. The team faced difficulties last year because they had only one member who was on the team the previous year, so he had the task of training the team alone. Because of this, Lu said he was “thrown into” the project, but feels that the team has improved and learned a lot this year.
“This year was a big step for our team,” Lu said. “Working so hard on this project, there’s no greater feeling than watching the car run for the first time.”
While some of the team trains new members, others work on the first revision of the car during fall quarter, said Chao, the software team leader.
It is during the last three or four weeks before the competition that the process gets intense, Chao said.
“The last week, between Sunday and Friday, I got maybe 20 hours of sleep,” he said, as he was working in the lab coding the software. He said he and several of his teammates even slept in the lab because there were so many last-minute details to perfect.
Mike Briggs, advisor for IEEE, said the team did an excellent job and built on their experiences from last year. He said the leadership this year helped them improve.
“They are a great team,” Briggs said. “Karen is very directed, focused. … She is the only woman on the team and these guys, they do what she tells them; it’s great.”
