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| Dwaine Jungen (center), President of Preferred Chassis Corporation, visited Bluefield State College recently to discuss progress involving his corporation and the Center for Applied Research & Technology (CART) at BSC in developing an unmanned robotic vehicle to compete in the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's (2005) Grand Challenge. Jungen is flanked by BSC engineering technology faculty Dr. Bob Riggins (left) and Professor & CART Director Bruce Mutter (right). |
(Bluefield)—The opportunity to take toughness and technology to another level has served as a catalyst to bring into partnership a pair of entities with seemingly different backgrounds. The Center for Applied Research & Technology (CART) at Bluefield State College and Dwaine Jungen, the president of Preferred Chassis Fabrication, are combining their talent for innovation with a common goal—developing an autonomous (unmanned) robotic vehicle capable of negotiating up to 175 miles of rugged desert terrain by combining the capabilities of a rugged, versatile chassis with the technology to react appropriately to environmental and terrain challenges.
Bruce Mutter, CART Director, met Jungen at a DARPA participants’ conference several months ago in Anaheim, and they compared strategies for negotiating an obstacle-strewn Sahara desert course that none of the 2004 DARPA teams were able to complete. “I’ve been chasing DARPA for more than a year ago,” noted Jungen, who has been featured on the syndicated television program “Monster Garage.” “The philosophy of the teams in the 2004 competition didn’t put much emphasis on the platform, which explains primarily why those teams failed during that event.”
“When I met Bruce, I found that his philosophy and mine were very similar,” Jungen continued. The platform is, in many ways, more important than the control system, he said. “The platform absorbs and adapts to a wide variety of terrain and environmental challenges. It doesn’t matter how smart the technology is onboard the vehicle if the vehicle is stopped by the terrain.” Working together, CART and Preferred Chassis unveiled the chassis designed to carry CART’s technology in next August’s DARPA challenge. When they unveiled the “Scorpion-fox,” Jungen proclaimed, “In many ways we are more advanced than any other team in DARPA—we have a purpose-built vehicle that’s designed specifically for this competition.”
Jungen, who has already twice visited the CART headquarters at BSC, and Mutter see the considerable mutual benefit from their collaborative approach. “Team CART has found a partner so its technology can be demonstrated onboard, and I’ve found a partner to showcase our engineering and fabrication abilities,” Jungen stated.
“The DARPA Grand Challenge 2005 is a tremendous opportunity and a formidable challenge for our Unmanned Vehicle Systems program faculty, students, and industrial partners,” Mutter added. “Our participation and collaboration with corporate partners like Dwaine is immensely valuable. It stretches our resources and ingenuity. We are now competing with the most technologically innovative robotics engineers in the world.”
Sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Grand Challenge 2005 will take place on October 8, 2005, with a $2 million award for the team whose vehicle negotiates the desert challenge in the shortest amount of time within a specified time limit.
January 3, 2005
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