The FUTURE IS semi-NOW!

John Choi is a friend of Steve's. I've heard Steve talk about him all the time. I've been kept up on his exploits, and his accomplishments. I've never met him. And now he and Team Bonzai are doing something really cool. They've entered the DARPA Grand Challenge.

They've taken a standard VW Toureg and modified it to run independently of any controls. No Driver. No remote. Just 4 Mac Minis and GPS system. Give it a destination. Road or no road, it has to accommodate for any obstacles itself. Today (well, still today in America) they're in Fontana, competing in the semi-finals.

He's been so busy and sleep deprived that all his brain can think about are GPS signals, actuator torque curves, and how to teach the car to steer by feel. This seems to have displaced any passwords usually retained in those parts of his brain, cause he's forgotten how to access his blog. Anyhow, here's what John had to say:

"It's been nine long months of late nights and long weekends, too many ideas and too little time. But as with all journeys, this one had lots of lessons and contributed to the "building" of much character in all who participated."

"We had a demo at Herman Cook VW a couple of weeks ago and noticed a few problems that we thought we could fix. So.... we ordered a bigger motor to be able to turn tighter and stop faster. The new motor broke the old coupler. The new coupler didn't fit the old actuator. All the moving and swapping out parts caused some wires to get lodged under the seat hinge. The slow current drain from the hinge pressure turned into a full scale short circuit. But before discovering the culprit, embarked on a complete re-wiring of the car system (just in case)."

"That was last week. Last night, we got (almost) everything back together and the car moving again. That was just to explain why Kenny's first task after arriving in our hotel room was to take a nap."

- John

Good luck guys! Can't wait to see you in the finals! Maybe if you pass today we'll make the baby's middle name Bonzai?