A pair of recent Duke graduates narrowly missed a $2-million grand prize Saturday, when robotic vehicles they helped design finished second and third in a race sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Twenty-three autonomous vehicles raced through a 131.2-mile course in Nevada's Mojave Desert for this year's DARPA Grand Challenge. A team from Stanford University won the competition when its vehicle, a modified Volkswagen Touareg named Stanley, crossed the finish line after six hours and fifty-three minutes.
Hot on Stanley's tail were two Humvees customized by Carnegie Mellon University's Red Team Racing, a squad that includes Josh Johnston and Jason Ziglar, Pratt '05. The two began work on the automobiles' radar sensors-systems essential for directing the driverless vehicles-in September 2004.
At one point, 18 Duke students and two faculty advisers were involved in the creation of the radar device-called DROID, for "Duke Radar Object Identification Device." They collaborated with Aaron Mosher, a Boeing Company engineer from Huntsville, Ala. Mosher wrote the code that permitted long-range communications with the unmanned vehicles.
By mid-July, Johnston and Ziglar had put the finishing touches on the radar system and joined the rest of the Red Team in Pittsburgh to prepare for the race. They were trained as robot operators and began integrating the vehicles' myriad technologies.
Johnston and Ziglar spent the last two months in Carson City, Nev., where the Red Team lived in a casino while subjecting its two vehicles, H1ghlander and Sandstorm, to 175-mile endurance races and last-minute modifications.
"We were typically working 10 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week," Ziglar recalled.
Johnston, who was married July 9, calculated that he has spent less than half of his married life with his wife.
"That was rough," he said. "Living in a casino starts to wear on you."
The collaboration between Duke students and the Carnegie Mellon team was organized by electrical engineer Clint Kelly, Class of '59, who is now the Senior Vice President for Advanced Technology Development at the research and engineering firm SAIC.
Kelly persuaded SAIC to fund the Pratt students' development of a sophisticated radar guidance device. Aside from Duke and Boeing's overhead costs, SAIC provided all of the funding for the development of DROID, faculty advisor and Senior Research Scientist for Mechanical Engineering Robert Kielb wrote in an e-mail.
Red Team members said Kelly provided guidance and insight in addition to financial support.
"Clint was really big on a couple of different fronts. He was the connection between Red Team and Duke," Ziglar said. "He helped Josh get into grad school and me get a job at CMU. Whenever we went to him with a problem, he would always ask, 'How can I help?'"
In the end, team members were surprised by the third-place finish of H1ghlander, which they believed would win the race.
CMU professor William "Red" Whittaker, the Red Team's eponymous leader, said mechanical failure was to blame for H1ghlander's underperformance.
"Looks like engine trouble, but we won't know that until Monday," Whittaker said. The machines will be analyzed when they return to CMU Monday.
Whittaker called Johnston and Ziglar "superstars" and said the radar technology they developed "worked impeccably." He added that the sensors have potential applications in tractors, trucks, bulldozers and other machines.
"We were fortunate to have two really strong horses [who] actually moved from Duke to Pittsburgh, then dug in real strong to integrate and make it work," Whittaker said.
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