You're Asian, you must be smart, right?

So a while back I joined Team Aggie Spirit which is the UC Davis DARPA Grand Challenge team. That was maybe a month or so ago and since then I've put in time every weekend and even some weekdays into the electronics aspect of the team. Primarily I've assisted in the design and attempted improvement of the ultrasonic sensor system, and the manufacturing of various other components required for the car. Things like..., power supplies, microcontroller boards and crap like that. It's been fun doing this, and I've learned a lot in the process, but it's been quite tiring, and I haven't been helping nearly as much as some of the other members.

Now, why is it that I mention this? We have a "check-up" of sorts today, which involves taking our vehicle in its current state over to some place 20 miles or so from Sac. Once there, our car will be taken to a large flat area, be given some waypoints to follow, and two trashcans it must go past in order to do so. To put it simply, our car was nowhere near completion 24 hours before the deadline. I got to the shed where people were working on the car at about 9pm last night, and I stayed until 4am working, and trying to get everything together. There were those there who had been there since Saturday and had been taking naps during slow times at the shed.

All in all right now many people feel very frustrated. I don't know the final word on how well the software is handling the sensors and the GPS inputs, and how well the car is doing in terms of obstacle-avoidance, but I have a bad feeling about it in any case. The car should be testing about now, or within the next hour or two, and I'm wondering if this is the end of the group. If we don't pass this checkpoint, then we're out of the running for this year's race. A lot learned too late I guess.

At least I learned how to solder.

# posted by Yann : 11:30