The Trip to KSC

June 6-14, 1992



Prelude

I opened the door to the truck and Mike said "What's all that smoke?"

"Maybe it's dust from the door opening?" I said tentatively.

ZZZZZZ!!!, ZZZPHT!!!, ZZZZSNAP!!!

In the recesses of the truck an apparition out of a Stephen King novel
appeared. The battery cage had leaped from the Tessellator and
embraced my bike in an electrical deathgrip. Sparks flew as my bike
gave its swansong.



Truckin'

NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) is about 1100 miles from our lab at
Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh. Our group has been building a robot to
service space shuttle tiles and it was time to bring the mobile robot
down for a midproject demonstration of the system. We planned for a
week of driving, preparation, demonstration and meetings. We packed up
our robot and a lot of related project items into a large truck in our
laboratory at CMU and took most of Friday to get everything set and
packed. I rented a 15' truck and a minivan for the group.

Most of the group was going for a total of 12 people. Myself, Mike
Blackwell, Bob O'Toole, Simon Gatrall, Fritz Morgan, Jason Almeter,
Marcus Alzona, Jesse Easudes, Jim Murphy, Mel Rosso-Llopart, and
Thomas Werthmann and his wife Angelika. Hagen Schempf, one of the
principals in the project, couldn't make it due to other
obligations.

Mike flew down early with his girlfriend Terri and Mel and Murph were
flying down on a rough tough 90 minute flight while the rest of us
would cruise the 20+ hours on America's highways and by-ways.

We took three vehicles; a rented truck and minivan and Bob's car. Bob
shared driving with Simon while I drove the truck with Jason riding
shotgun. Fritz and Jesse shared control of the minivan with the rest
as steerage.

We packed a huge pile of stuff from the lab into the truck including
such things as fold-up tables, tools, spare parts, hardware etc. I was
taking no chances on something going wrong or KSC not having something
we needed. We even took a large two-piece ramp that Fritz had built
two summers ago for the Ambler, another large robot our lab built,
to walk on. We used the ramp to bring the Tessellator on and off the
truck.



Driving Down

The truck I rented was an Izusu with a 15' body. Packing was tight and
we could have done better balancing the weight. The truck listed to
starboard a bit. Quite a bit actually.

The truck was a dog. By that I don't refer to it affectionately as
man's best friend. I mean it was a, a lemon, a real marshmallow, a
complete disgrace to the truck breed. Of course we had over-loaded it
a bit. Get this, the truck weighed 8000lbs and was capable of a Gross
Vehicle Weight (GVW to those in the truck priesthood) of 11,000lbs!
This meant the truck was capable of carrying only 3000lbs! Most big
pickups can carry nearly this much. Like I said, a dog. For a turbo-
charged diesel it could have had a little more oomph...

We left Pittsburgh around 4:30 in the afternoon. There was some last
minute scurrying around as usual and we stole a padlock from the shop
and also took a treadplate from the highbay but covered the hole
with a piece of plywood and a big box. The treadplate was used to
connect the ramp with the truckbed for getting things on and off the
truck. Dear reader, when you leave on a long trip and take a some
treadplate that covers a hole, tell someone, leave a note, mark the
area. Don't be stupid. We were. More on this later.

We drove down the interstates. Some people entertain romantic notions
about riding the `blue highways', those scenic pieces of americana
that are off the beaten interstate path. It just means it takes a lot
longer to get where you're going. Some refer to the interstates as
sterile ribbons with naught but truck stops along the way. But
actually they are quite scenic and the route we took through West
Virginia, Virginia, and the Carolinas was quite nice. The last stage
was Georgia and Florida on I95.

In wild and woolly West Virginia the truck sometimes slowed to 25 mph
up the mountains. I kept the pedal to the floor through much of West
Virginia. This allowed me to get up to 75-80mph on the downhills and
help cruise up at least part of some of the downhills. At one point a
big U-haul truck zipped past while on an uphill crawl. At I later
found out, while I shook my fist in frustration everyone in the other
two vehicles were doubled up with laughter. Sigh...

Around 11:00 that night the truck was descending an 8% grade over 5-6
miles through West Virginia. The truck shook and vibrated like a
motel mattress as I pumped the screaming brakes. After descending the
grade I pulled off into a rest stop. The other vehicles following us
reported that smoke had been pouring from the vehicle's rear. We let
the brakes cool for awhile and headed off again. Boy, this was getting
exciting...

We rolled on through the night stopping only for fuel and food a
couple of times. I just kept driving and the only way the others
could stop me by driving to the side and frantically beep and wave.
Pretty good system. The truck needed to stop a couple more times than
the other vehicles because of massive fuel needs. At 3:00 in the
morning the truck was running on a quarter tank and we spent an hour
stopping at each exit searching for a station with diesel. There had
been a huge accident and dozens of police cars, tow trucks, ambulances
and choppers were all present. Flares had been set up miles before and
even at 3:00am the traffic backed up. We finally found diesel and as
we pulled in the truck was running on fumes.

After dawn we drove for a few hours before stopping to eat and call
ahead to Todd and tell him we were at the South Carolina/Georgia
border. By 1:00pm we stopped at a McDonald's a few miles from KSC and
called the robot lab. Rich Bennett was at the lab and would meet us at
the main gate. We drove there and the security guard was a little
sceptical of these three vehicle filled with glassy-eyed bedraggled
geeks but allowed us to wait there.


Phone Phreaks

We brought three cellular phones with us. Red's, one of the robot
vehicle's phone, and a borrowed one from Ben Motazed in the lab.
Unfortunately, Ben didn't know the number of his own phone since he
always called out on it. Thus, the vehicle that had that phone
couldn't be called by anyone else and Cellular One wouldn't give the
number either when we called them. Anyway, the phones were a little
frustrating because you needed to have roaming codes to dial when you
left Pittsburgh and much of the route we took didn't have service for
the phones either. Marcus had great fun with them though and spent
some time figuring them out. He even dialed Thomas' family in
Austria while going through the Carolinas. (Don't worry, project money
ain't paying for that!)

Soon after we crossed into Florida early Saturday afternoon the
minivan pulled up to the side of the truck along the highway. Fritz
frantically waved from the passenger side and pulled off the road
ahead of the truck. Thinking there might be smoke pouring out the back
or a fallen robot I stopped on the side of the highway behind the
minivan. Fritz came running over with a cellular phone in hand and
said "Phone for you!". Sheesh. It was Murph just checking on our
location. He was still in Pittsburgh but would be flying out that
afternoon with Mel.That's all. The phone connection was pretty bad
and I was sitting in the truck yelling into the phone. We continued
on...



Delta Launch

We finally got on base and over the robot lab at KSC. We parked the
truck next to a large door.  The lab, which just a year or so ago was
bereft of activity was now packed with a variety of projects. This was
great to see but made it difficult to move things in. Luckily the
various devices we had were pretty maneuverable on pallet jacks. We
unpacked everything but the robot.

We had noticed a problem back in Pittsburgh with the batteries
apparently leaking. Jesse had noticed and measured the deck voltage at
96 volts. It should have been zero. The batteries are sealed lead acid
gelled cells. This means it is standard technology and should not
leak. In fact we had assurances from the manufacturer that they would
not leak when mounted in any position. In the event they were somehow
overcharged they did have valves. We hadn't charged them however and
they should not have been leaking. Very strange.

Fritz went back into the truck and found that there was a voltage
between the battery cage ground and the deck supporting the cage. This
meant that some of the fluid had leaked out again. We attempted
cleaning the outside of the accessible batteries and also removed the
bolts to prevent the whole robot from becoming charged. We closed up
the truck and parked it for the evening and went to our hotel in Cocoa
Beach.

The battery cage slides enabled us to easily remove and insert the
battery cage (all 1300lbs of it) to the robot.We designed in some
plastic slides made of a low friction and strong material called UHMW
Polyethylene. UHMW stands for Ultra High Molecular Weight. We thought
it sounded cool and it worked well too. Anyway, a single person with a
pallet jack could easily move the battery cage in and out of the
robot because of the slide design and the material we used.

Rest and back to KSC on Sunday

A number of us had been up for well over 30 hours so we went back to
the hotel, showered, went out to dinner and slept in on Sunday. We
were back to the lab the next day around noon. I went around to get
the truck and drove around to the big roll up door and hopped out to
open up the truck.

Disclaimer: Although I have been accused of driving fast in life I did
not drive quickly around the corner to the door!

At this point, you may wish to reread the Prelude again. It would pain
me to have to type it in again or even cut and paste it.

Smoke billowed out, a funny smell was in the air and sparks were
flying in the depths of the truck.  I jumped in and saw my bike pinned
to the wall of the truck by the battery cage which had slid out from
the robot. Without the securing bolts we had removed the day before it
had slid easily out and the only thing that stopped it was the bicycle
frame.

I'm not that sentimental but I did save up to buy this bike a long
time ago and have equipped it and reequipped it over the years with
some nice components. It's a Legnano, an Italian make not sold in the
states any more. It is also a steel framed bike. Conducts electricity
well. It was pointed out later that had the frame been carbon fiber
this might not have been so dramatic and had it been magnesium it
would have been far more spectacular!

I grabbed a 2x4 and tried levering the 1300lbs of lead, acid and steel
away from the bike. A shower of sparks greeted this intrusion but I
managed to move it. I finally levered the cage back onto the robot and
removed the bike.

The bike was still smoking as I pulled it out and handed it to someone
off the truck. I went back to check the batteries. One of the them had
been punctured by the bike pedal and was a gaping mess of gelled acid
and lead. It was a mess. A lead-acid mess.

We cleaned up the dripping gel a bit, bolted the cage securely to the
robot and hooked up shore power. Shore power is basically an extension
cord to a big power supply. Mike had to wire up the supply to the
building power and then we plugged the robot it. We put the ramp in
place to bring the robot off the truck. Just as we were getting ready
to do this...

The Delta Launch

The roar came over the nearby trees and we saw a rocket launch in
progress. It was a Delta II launch of the Extreme Ultraviolet
Observatory, EUVE, observatory. This is one of the orbiting
observatories that NASA is placing in orbit to better understand the
universe. EUVE will spend several years in orbit studying stars that
emit very short wave-length light that does not penetrate Earth's
atmosphere. The launch was great and we had a fabulous view of the
Delta climbing into the sky. Interestingly the launch was delayed a
few minutes to avoid hitting the Russian space station, Mir. The
launch was the 32nd consecutive launch for the Delta since 1986. NASA
had to buy this from the Air Force since just prior to Challenger,
they has no contracts with other rocket builders.

More Sparks

After the rocket disappeared from sight we drove the robot off the
truck and maneuvered it into the robot lab. We removed the battery
tray and glumly surveyed the damage. We then removed all the batteries
and decided to make a flat configuration of eight batteries which
would be enough to for many hours anyway. While rewiring later I
dropped a wrench across two terminals. The ensuing POW! caused me to
do a backward roll and flip that would do an olympian gymnast proud. I
stayed away from the batteries for awhile. Everyone else had a good
laugh...nervous laughs...

Safety People

`Good thing the NASA safety guys weren't around' we were told later by
several people. NASA safety has an important job. On the one hand they
prevent you from doing anything stupid. On the other hand they prevent
you from doing anything. A great example was the sheet of plywood we
had hanging from a crane to simulate the underside of the orbiter. We
glued some xeroxes of shuttle tiles to this so that we could
demonstrate the accurate positioning of the robot beneath them.

A sheet of plywood weighs maybe 20-30lbs. The crane had dual hooks and
controls and each hook was rated for 10 TON loads. We had both hooks
and nearly inch-thick steel cables looped to support each end of the
plywood sheet. So we had 40,000 lbs of crane strength for the plywood.
This is roughly 1000 times factor of safety on a crane spec which
probably had a large built in factor of safety as well! However,
because it was a suspended load we had to mark it off, wear hardhats
underneath it and have a barricade around the area.

If you sneak up behind a safety person and whisper "suspended load"
they'll jump out of their skin and throw forms and safety equipment at
you. Probably the most difficult piece of equipment to get ok'd at
NASA is a suspended load rated for humans.One example we had seen two
summer previous was a hoist for Spacelab that cost over $300K. It was
very similar to a climbing rig that rescuers might use to lower or
raise someone from a well.

The kicker on the crane supporting the plywood was that the crane
control was in the way and had to be lifted and tied off to itself.
The crane control was a massive steel casting for the dozen buttons
and knobs to run the crane. It was beefy and had steel protrusions off
the bottom that were handles for the operator to hold. This control
weighed more than the plywood and was tied off with a small bolt and
washer. No one seemed concerned about that! If the plywood had fallen
someone would have been annoyed but if the control had fallen someone
might be dead! It was by the book though.

A couple of days later during one of the demos, someone in the
audience leaned over to Bob ad asked sarcastically "Do you think that
crane will hold that plywood?"

Going into the OPF with the robot. 

After rigging up the ersatz battery pack we got things running well
enough to go to the Orbiter Processing Facility on Sunday afternoon.
We loaded the robot up into the truck and Simon, Bob, Mike, Murph and
myself met Todd, Willis and Rich at the OPF. Unloading went without a
hitch and we drove Tess into the hallway that connected to the OPF
highbay. One of the drivetrains was making a funny noise which we
attributed to control system oscillation. Our plan was to remedy this
later.

We entered through the personnel access doors which are only 105cm
wide (42") and were able to bring the robot in without any problems.
We spent the next hour or so driving the robot around the highbay. No
shuttle was present and the place was pretty dead. Perfect for a first
test. We went under low beams and around the outside workspaces, and
up against jackstands. We exited the Orbiter area through a crowded
work area adjacent to the orbiter. We were able to move easily through
all areas. Great test!

We put Tessellator back on the truck and dropped the robot back off at
the robot lab and headed back to the hotel.

Coupling Decoupled

On Monday we started up the robot to do some testing of the base and
calibrate the targets for the positioning system. After a short period
of joysticking the robot we realized something was wrong. One of the
wheels wasn't turning. The wheels we're using on the robot are very
different from normal wheels that we see in everyday life. They have
rollers on the wheels that give the wheels the appearance of a large
section of a screw. These rollers in combination with proper control
of the wheel rotation give the robot the ability to turn in place or
translate in any direction.  They make parallel parking a breeze! What
is also interesting is that if one wheel is free to rotate that it
takes a little time to realize that something is wrong. This also
enables us to control the robot pretty well even with just three
wheels.

Mike quickly went through several possibilities and after some
connector swapping between other wheels we determined that is was a
mechanical failure in of the wheel's drivetrains. I didn't have too
many spares of parts and had no idea if we could fix things at the
component level. I decided that we should drop and dissect the
drivetrains.

We pulled the two wheels off and then the double drivetrain set and
then pulled off the faulty drivetrain from that assembly. A few
minutes of bolt loosening and removal later I could peer into the area
between our motor and speed reducer. The coupling in that space had
sheared in half.

The coupling looks like a small bellows, much like a small section of
vacuum cleaner hose but made of metal. It's purpose is to mechanically
connect two rotating shafts while allowing for some angular
misalignment between two shafts. It reduces wear and takes up slop in
the relationship between components. Unfortunately, our had been
ripped apart!

In a strange way we were relieved. If the coupling had sheared the
afternoon before we might have been stuck in the OPF. It would have
made it difficult to move it out of the OPF. We could have done it. It
just would have been a pain.

We suspected that the noises we had been hearing earlier had something
to do with it. The technical explanation, we believe, is as follows:
The motor that connects to the coupling, and in turn, the speed
reducer or gearbox, and wheel is controlled by electronics and
software. It is this software, after all, that makes our robot a
robot. There are a number of parameters that we set in software to
ensure that this motor control is smooth, rapid and accurate. If the
parameters aren't right then you can get wild oscillations, strange
noises, premature wear and overall, inaccurate motions of the robot. A
number of these parameters, called `gains', are tuned to get these
characteristics. Tuning gains is sometimes an art and although there
are methodical approaches, they are lengthy and not always the best
values result. We had attempted to tune these via simply noting the
smoothness and minimizing vibration. This had worked fine for several
weeks while the robot was operating and we hadn't the time for much
else.

However, in the ensuing weeks, unbeknownst to us, some grease had
leaked from the speed reducer. This changed the load that the motor
was controlling. It actually became easier to turn the speed reducer.
The damping effect of the grease-filled reducer was reduced and the
motor began to make some funny noises as the tuned parameters were
now, in a real sense, out of tune.This was ok though, we thought, and
we could still operate (we thought) for some time, or at least the
week of the demonstrations.

It was as though you were asked to pick up a block weighing 100lbs but
it actually weighed only 10lbs. You would tend to brace yourself and
lift much harder than would otherwise. This results in a silly,
surprised motion as you lift the block from the floor. You overshoot
your lifting motion.

We believe that the motor was overshooting and vibrating enough to
introduce fatigue into the coupling. Fatigue is the same effect you
get when bending a paperclip back and forth and it finally breaks.
This rapid cycling of motion is a bane of engineers because any one
cycle or a short set of them will not come close to breaking the
material. But sustained and continuous cycling will break just about
anything.

Luckily we had a spare coupling and we replaced it and had the robot
together again in a short times. Total time from failure to diagnosis
and replacement was about two and one-half hours. As a couple of NASA
people pointed out later this was in itself impressive and pointed out
the serviceability and maintainability of the design. It was still
up to us to take the time later and properly set the parameters and
understand the fundamental nature of the problem. That was to be done
at a later

The Second Rocket

We had heard there was to be another launch that week on Tuesday
evening. After going to the hotel to settle in and change we headed
for Jetty Park. Jetty Park is close the Air Force side of Cape
Canaveral and offers an excellent view of several of the Air Force
launch complexes. We used the Air Force base to get to and from KSC
because it was faster driving from Cocoa Beach that way. We stopped
for some take out at the Boardwalk Grill, a place with good sandwiches
that we have often stopped at on our trips to KSC.

They had a building at the park with a roof that spectators could get
a good view northeast of the launchpads. Murph had a scanner and was
listening to chopper pilots, ship captains and status of the flight.
Several people crowded around him. There were probably a hundred
people around the small park ogling for a good view. A weather blimp
was moored off to one side of the launch pad, a dredging barge was
dredging and a submarine came into port while we waited.

The 10 second countdown finally came and the launch went off
spectacularly. The Atlas is a solid fuel device and the rocket's glare
was white hot and was hard to look at it even from a couple of miles
away. It was like looking at a welder's torch. The sound was great,
like a continually rumbling thunderstorm, and the sight even more
impressive. The launch was successful and the satellite was on its
way to orbit. Several of us in the group had been to KSC several times
and had never seen any launch.This was a great addition to the trip!

The launch payload was an Intelstat K communications satellite whose
first job would be the Barcelona Olympics. So we saw the launch that
had the satellite that will carry the images of the sports that we
watch on TV later this summer. Sounds like an old nursery rhyme...

Mike had to drive Terri to the airport though and didn't get to see
the early phase of the launch but it was quite visible as it climbed
into the sky.

Robot Lab

The robot lab we operated in at KSC was a building that resembled a
small warehouse. It housed a huge 10-ton dual hook gantry crane, a
small operations room and a variety of projects. Other robot projects
were underway including a robot to inspect filters in a room at the
launch pad. We were part of a study two years ago that examined that
application and proposed robotic solutions.  It was neat to see that
coming together and it was fulfilling to see our study work being
transformed into real projects at KSC.

Shuttle Rollout

On Wednesday Atlantis was due to rollout from the Vehicle Assembly
Building (VAB) at midnight. We decided to go check it out. We had no
idea if we could get it to see it.There might be guards to stop us
from seeing it or there might be no access to areas near roll out.

Everyone but Bob and Mike decided to chance it. They didn't think we'd
get in and prized their sleep more. Little did they know... We left
around 11:30pm in the mini-van. We went through the Air Force Base
side. The guard looked like a freshman and only quickly looked at the
passes we had.

On several occasions as we entered the Base and passed through the
guard stations we commented on the ease with which one could enter
KSC. The passes were simple affairs that could be created on any
simple desktop publishing outfit. The usual guard checks involve a
drivers license or photo-id. However over the course of the week we
got in by flashing just an id or pieces of paper that looked correct!
The guards were sometimes on the phone talking to their buddies about
that evening's activities and practically just waved us through. Those
who had KSC badges never even stopped and just cruised through. We
wove scenarios of terrorists getting their way on base with some
shoulder-fired Stinger missile. Wouldn't be hard to do and that was
kind of scary. That week we also saw Patriot Games which was based on
the Tom Clancy techno-thriller of the same name. It was about a fringe
terrorist group making waves in the US.

We went past the empty gate that led towards the OPF and VAB where the
orbiters were. The orbiter had just emerged from the VAB on time at
midnight. It was an other-worldly scene out of a really great science
fiction movie. The assembled Orbiter, external tank and solid rocket
boosters were mounted on the Mobile Launch Platform. The whole shebang
was being carried by one of the monstrous brobdingnian crawlers
designed for the Saturn V's back in the 60's. The crawler is a slow
moving tracked vehicle of immense size and power. The turbo-charged
diesels have mufflers the size of automobiles. The tracks grind the
gravel road it traverses into dust. The crawler and shuttle was
accompanied by a number of lilliputian vehicles as escorts. It was an
amazing and eerie sight. We watched for awhile and took pictures and
were bitten by lots of bugs. It was well worth it.

I went over to talk to a guard nearby about following it to the launch
pads but he said it would be difficult to do that. He then asked who I
was and what we were doing there. After I mentioned that we were
building robots he asked about someone I had never heard of in the
robotics section. I suspect he was looking to see if we were for real.
I called his bluff and asked for more info on this guy. He demurred
and said he had to go take care of more traffic.

We soon left after some more awe inspiring views of the orbiter and
headed out. On the way out we stopped at the empty guard section and
took pictures of us hanging around the empty booth.  What a night.

Off Hours Take One

Wednesday evening we went out for miniature golf. Great stuff. I was
accused of cheating because on one hole I shot directly for the cup
rather than go through the levels and tunnels everyone else did. It
was relaxing and a lot of fun. Jesse backed the minivan into a curb on
the way out.  Bob and I felt that one. We packed nine people into the
minivan and Bob and I scrunched into the rear cargo area; it was
easier with one vehicle.

Some of the other evenings we would swim in the pool or ocean. `Hoops'
O'Toole and `Air' Dowling went to shoot hoops at a couple of times at
a local schoolyard we found. We'd play typical PIG or HORSE-type
games. Bob was a better shooter so I had to improvise some weird shots
in order to stay in the running.One night after a particularly heavy
chinese meal Bob, Mike and Fritz and I went out for some two-on-two.
Shortly we all felt like throwing up after running around. Fritz had
also dressed-up that day in his good shoes and long pants and soon
regretted it.  One night we went out gazorching on the beach.
Gazorching is a sport where you take surgical tubing and a cloth pouch
and launch waterballoons, or anything you like, at high speed and far
distance. We lobbed a few at the ocean, thought about launching a few
towards a gathering of a local Harley-Davidson convention but thought
the better of it.

On Thursday evening several of us were invited to a party at Willis
Crumpler's house. It was fun to see people out of the work setting and
see other aspects of their lives. Willis had this great model of a
house he was building as a retirement home in the Carolinas.

Demonstrations

The demonstrations were scheduled for Wed, Thurs and Friday with one
demo per day. The were organized so that the level in the NASA
organization rose as the demos sequenced. However, I felt that
Wednesday's was probably the most important because these were the
actual users who were closet to the real issues of the required tasks.

We did a rehearsal on Tuesday with Todd as the MC for the
demonstration of the mobile base, the vision system and the
rewaterproofing tool. It started with an overview of the project and
then focussed on specific parts of the system. The base moved around
under joystick control and then a demonstration of autonomous
operation of the base showed the postioning system.

The positioning system uses a rotating laser to pick out bar code
targets mounted around the room. Kind of a fancy supermarket scanner
except it can figure out where it is with respect to the targets as
well. This is used to determine current robot position and used to
determine where to move as well. We gamely set up several targets and
tried some measuring tape surveys. In the end however, one of the
targets kept throwing things out of kilter and we elimnated that one.
A careful survey would have eliminated that problem. We'll be doing
that back at CMU to further test the system.

The rehearsal wasn`t that great. Todd was a little nervous and turned
from the audience making it difficult to hear him. The content was ok
but drawn out in parts. It was a lot of material to cover but the talk
needed some tightening up. We met following the rehearsal and made
several reccomendations and changes.

The first demonstration the next day went superbly. Smooth, no pauses,
easily heard, content flowed well and the demos went flawlessly. Lots
of questions and a kick-the-tires session afterward with lots of
interactions. The next two demos over the next two days went equally
well with the only difference being the level of audience interest
lowering slightly and inexplicably. Overall, though the
demonstration went extremely well and Todd and others got some great
accolades from the KSC community. Todd actually feared the demos went
too well! That is, expectations might be raised too high. I don't
think so since he was very careful not to oversell it during the
course of the talks and discussions.

The demos were the raison d'etre for the trip and it went very, very
well. It was a success.

Off-hours take two.

"Get out of the pool!" Bob and I had kept swimming well past the
11:00pm pool closing and the guard returned to yell at us. We climbed
out and he asked us for our room numbers. It was like high school
again. We played the perfect dumb act. "Uh, I dunno 471, 714, do you
know?" "Uh, I can't remember, it's over there somewhere" I vaguely
waved towards the hotel. The guard knew the game well and just let us
go. I guess they had a problem with neighborhood kids using the hotel
pool.

Simon and Jesse went out to an all-you-can-eat sushi bar. They were
heavily into the raw fish scene. It was interesting they said. At
first they received great service but as they began to pile up the
fish wrappers the sushi preparer became slower. The sushi guy turned
out to be Korean and built monster trucks on the side. It's a
living...

Off to the Launch Pad!

Mike, Bob and I had been to KSC a number of times and had seen just
about every building and facility including the orbiter facilities,
processing facilities for payloads and climbed all over the launch
pads both empty and with orbiters. Once we had even been able to get
access to mid-deck area of Atlantis where the astronauts enter the
orbiter on the launch pad. Another time I had climbed up to the upper
levels of the OPF once to get a close look at the shuttle robot arm.
None of the others had been down before so this was a great
opportunity to see these areas while they were down there.

Todd arranged for visits to the OPF and launch pads. A group of five
went and got to go to one of the launch pads where one of the orbiters
was being readied for a launch later in July. They got to stick their
heads up the cones of the Shuttle main engines and walk around the
mobile launch platform. Great stuff! They came back as excited as I
had been when I first got to walk around and see the stuff. I've been
told by people at the pads that we've been able to see more stuff than
VIP's like senators and congressmen normally get to see.

But none of us had seen a launch...

Off-hours take three. 

Because Cape Canaveral and Kennedy has been the centerpiece of the US
space program for launch activity there is quite a bit of history to
the area. There are a couple of museums that cover this activity
including Space Port and the Air Force Museum. Space Port has a number
of historic rockets outside, an Omni-Max theater, and lots of neat
exhibits. The Air Force Museum has a wide assortment of historical
rockets on exhibit in a field and is a great capsule of rocket history
and development. Several people from the group went to see these
places.

Crippen

Bob Crippen was one of the first shuttle astronauts and piloted
Columbia on her maiden voyage.  He was also recently appointed
director of Kennedy Space Center. He had been asked to stop by the
Robot Lab for a demonstration of the robot system. Usually people at
the highest levels in an organization are invited to these things but
their busy schedules don't allow them to see them.  Crippen came to
see the system Friday morning.

He had several good questions and was pretty good at tuning out other
things around him to focus on what was being presented. Even though he
was on a tight schedule he stayed to ask a couple more questions about
the robot system and then saw the Re-waterproofing tool and Vision
system.  Apparently this was the first time he'd been over to the
robot lab and he seemed impressed.

Historically, NASA's astronauts and politically sensitive leaders have
pooh-poohed robotics because they felt the human element was necessary
when things went awry. There's truth there but NASA's own precursors
to manned exploration and deep-space probes have been fantastically
successful as well. There's room for both humans and robots.

The main reason we are building this robot system is not to save money
or lives or paperwork.The real agenda and the reason it was funded is
to demonstrate robot competence in complex real tasks. Proof of
existence goes much farther than laboratory demonstrations. The end
result, it is hoped, will be confidence in the design, deployment and
use of robot systems throughout NASA.

Hydro-lazer Robot

One of the visitors to the demos was a member of the Hydro-lazer robot
project. He invited us to go over and see their robot project. We
arranged to visit the following day and went to see it. This was a
robot project used as part of the solid rocket booster refurbishing.
The hydro-lazer is a highpressure water jet to remove a cork resin
mixture from sections of the solid rocket boosters (SRB's) after they
are retrieved from the ocean. The jet is mounted to a GMF robot which
is attached to a mobile vehicle. Pretty nice simple off-the-shelf
solution for the problem. The other sub-project they had done was to
model the system using a computer simulation program called Igrip. We
went to see that and were impressed with it's capability. It was great
to see small dedicated teams getting stuff done in this fashion.

The Hydro-lazer project is relevant to our project in that they had to
go through extensive safety reviews and the resulting documentation is
being used as a model for the reviews we have to accomplish with our
system.

Friday night

Before I left Pittsburgh, I arranged to meet a friend, Dan Wegerif,
who had started a small company near KSC to make a sensor skin for
robots and industrial applications. The skin would tell you if the
robot was too close to another surface. It wasn`t really a skin yet.
More of a prototype electronics board to show principles. A few of us
went over one afternoon to see it and try it out.  It worked pretty
well but seemed a little nascent to depend on for the Tessellator.
With development however, it seemed quite promising.

Dan extended an invitation to go out on his boat and maybe do some
jet-skiing too but we had to check our schedules etc

Friday night we were debating whether or not to leavne early Saturday
or even that night. The group had been running around and I didn`t
think it was a good idea to head out that night. Jesse and Simon
wanted to go back. Jesse for personal reasons and Simon hated Florida
weather. We took a vote though and decided to stay and accept Dan's
invitation. Absolutely the best thing we did!

River Cops

We drove down to Dan`s place on Merritt Island. He lives on the water
in a beautiful house with a boat dock in the yard. We all piled in and
headed off to one of Dan`s buddies who had some jetski's and a big
Scarab boat. On the way through the waterways we were flagged down by
a Coast Guard patrol. I was hoping for a big Miami Vice chase scene
but dan wasn`t going for it. They pulled us over because we had a lot
of people on and I was hanging over the front of the boat while it was
going full speed. They checked the capacity, number of lifejackets,
air horn etc. and then let us go. Nice guys actually.

We made it to Dan`s buddies` place. We put a jetski in the water, a
nice Yamaha Windrunner and also split the group into the two boats.
Mike and Bob tried getting on the jetski together and fell over. It
was funny but there were lots of sharp barnacles on the dock area and
they cut themselves a little. We tried one person on from then on. We
headed both boats and the jetski through the waterways to a small
island where lots of people gathered and took turns on the jetski.

I've never really been into the snowmobile/dirt bike/ATV scene and
thought the jetski would be kind of like that. IT WAS FUN!!!. Wow,
this was great. I fell over, of course, while trying some fast
manuevers and 180's. I could have ridden all day. We all got to ride
it and Simon and Jesse seemed to have no regrets about staying after
that! Bob and I tried a two man ride again and took the jetski back.
We fell over once and clambered back on by having me throttle up just
as Bob tried to get back on. Worked the second time. What a great end
to the trip. We picked the truck up at KSC and headed north.

The Georgia Border

At the Georgia border all trucks were to stop at an agricultural
station. To check for bugs, I guess.  We stopped and the guard was the
epitome of the southern good `ol boy cop. Leaning back on stool, feet
up, picking at his fingernails with a toothpick and chawing some
`bacca. Great...

"Watcha got in the back?"

Jason replied in a great cheerful booming voice "A robot for NASA from
Kennedy Space Center!"

"What?, Open her up, boys!"

We opened up the back and the guard clambered up the back to have a
looksee. He peered around the big pile of stuff and the end of the
robot that was half hidden in the morass of paraphernalia.

"OK boys, close her up!"

We drove on knowing that the world was safe for democracy...

We made it back home after another marathon driving session. We all
made it back a little tired but safe and sound. More to do on the
robot....