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WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. — Starting from the pole at Watkins Glen International usually is a good omen in Nextel Cup. But racing the Car of Tomorrow for the first time on the high-speed road course without much practice promised a few surprises for today’s Centurion Boats at The Glen.

Although the race winner has started from the pole eight times in the previous 21 Cup races, there’s a feeling that hardened road racers, such as Canada’s Ron Fellows and crowd favorite Boris Said, might have their best chance yet of securing that elusive victory.

“With the old cars, if you had success you could go off and build on it,” said points leader Jeff Gordon, who has four wins at Watkins Glen and a NASCAR-record nine road course triumphs in his career. “Now, it’s basically starting from scratch. Experience is not going to play as much of a role.

“I think this car really equals out the competition,” said Gordon, who was awarded the pole when qualifying was canceled Friday because of a misting rain. “In the past, we had great races with Ron Fellows and Scott Pruett and those guys. I would say our cars were probably a little better than theirs, and that’s why we were able to beat them. But in this situation, I think those guys could possibly really shine. They’ve got a lot of laps here, they’re good here.”

Fellows has won three Busch Series races at Watkins Glen and twice finished second in Cup — to Jeff Gordon in 1998 and Stewart three years ago despite starting last. Said was third two years ago, while Pruett, who is not in the race, finished second to Robby Gordon in 2003 and was fourth two years ago.

It will be an uphill battle. Fellows will start 26th in the Chevrolet normally driven by Tony Raines, and Said, who is replacing Bill Elliott in the No. 21 Wood Brothers Ford, will start from the back of the 43-car field.

“It’s going to be more difficult because I don’t believe these cars have as much downforce as the old stock car,” Fellows said. “That’s going to make it tougher, and they’ve still got tremendous horsepower, so we’re going to be going awfully fast in a straight line.”

BUSCH SERIES: Kevin Harvick had victory lane to himself Saturday, using perfect pit strategy to win the Zippo 200.

Harvick, the defending Busch Series champion, led 37 laps and beat Jeff Burton by 3.5 seconds for his second consecutive win, fifth this season and 31st of his career. That ties him with Jack Ingram for second all-time behind Mark Martin’s 47.

“We’ve won 31 of these races,” Harvick said. “But you don’t get to race against those guys. All you have is the history.”

Polesitter Kurt Busch was third, followed by Paul Menard and rookie Brad Coleman. Juan Pablo Montoya, who started on the front row and was seeking a record third NASCAR road course win of the season, ran up front much of the day but finished 33rd after being caught up in a crash with Jason Leffler on a restart with 14 laps remaining in the 82-lap race.

AFTER THE 2002 WINSTON CUP season began with two different reactions to late-race crashes–officials waved the red flag in Daytona but allowed the next week’s race, in Rockingham, to end under a yellow flag–controversy overtook safety as the series buzzword.

Controversy is nothing new in Winston Cup, but in this case it was perpetuated, if not created, by the series’ inconsistencies and willingness to bend, if not break, its laws whenever it sees fit.

To be fair, in one case the crash affected the outcome more than race officials could have known. Daytona’s late crash offered then-leader Sterling Marlin the opportunity to make a mistake–exiting and working on his car during the delay–that forced officials to banish him to the back of the pack.

Possibly because of that fallout, in Rockingham there was no red flag, and fans yawned as Matt Kenseth sailed across the finish–in front of Marlin.

Further exposing NASCAR’s ineffectiveness regarding the interpretation of the rulebook, in the season’s third race in Las Vegas, a penalty was enforced on every driver–except Marlin, who apparently had already reached his season quota of bad breaks. Unfortunately, instead of embracing consistency, NASCAR seemingly prefers leaving its drivers shrugging their shoulders and having to find consolation that these sorts of things will even themselves out over the course of the season.

After the Rockingham race, there inexplicably were calls for more racing instead of more consistency. Obscuring its own errors with potential rule changes, NASCAR officials were swayed to consider adopting some form of overtime for Winston Cup races, most likely similar to the “green-flag rule.” That rule–used, among other circuits, by NASCAR’s Craftsman Truck Series–dictates that a race must end with at least two laps of green-flag racing. This ignores that an overtime period is enacted to break deadlocks when an athletic contest has no winner. This is not the case in Winston Cup races–the outcome is not in doubt–and giving drivers the chance to make up for caution flags at the end of a race but at no other time makes little sense.

Even worse, it could prove dangerous. Purposefully causing a crash in order to buy time for a hard-charging teammate should hardly be a worry–drivers are competitive, not stupid–but bunching cars up at the end of the race with the results on the line can create some needlessly aggressive driving. NASCAR is considering trading a potentially drab finish for a potentially dangerous scrum. This does not seem smart.

Plus, drivers are making late-race decisions–most importantly, when to refuel–on the basis of running a set number of miles. The best drivers are squeezing everything they can out of their car within a set number of miles. Some elements of strategy, not to mention talent, would be threatened by running unscheduled laps.

The series can’t be accused of not giving the people what they want, but more racing would change the entire rhythm of a race–and may punish drivers more than reward fans.

SAN FRANCISCO - In what sounds like a science fair project on steroids, engineers at Stanford University plan to have an unmanned robot car ready to navigate urban traffic in less than a year.

The car, a 2006 Volkswagen Passat wagon dubbed Junior, is Stanford’s newest competitor in a high-stakes road race sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the U.S. Department of Defense’s research and development arm.

The Stanford car will compete in the agency’s third and most challenging derby—the DARPA Urban Challenge, in which robotic cars will drive in a mock city environment. Cars must merge, navigate traffic, traverse busy intersections, avoid obstacles and master the most delicate of skills—determining who has the right of way.

“These cars are driven by artificial intelligence,” said Sebastian Thrun, a computer science and electrical engineering professor at Stanford, who unveiled his plans for Junior this week at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco.

Stanford and Thrun have been down this road before. Stanford’s entry in the 2005 race, Stanley, won first place. But that race was run in the Nevada desert. “The next challenge will be to drive where we live,” said Thrun, who spoke on a panel about the future of robotics.

“This new generation of robots is making the case that they can safely navigate without any human assistance,” he said.

An array of other U.S. universities, many with corporate partners, are involved in the 2007 challenge, including Carnegie Mellon University, which finished a close second to Stanford in the 2005 race.

Thrun says the project may pave the way for a future in which self-driving cars will make transportation safer for those who, like the elderly, might rather ride than drive.

“By 2030, we should be able to deploy this technology on highways reliably,” he said.

Thrun said he expected a battlefield version of the car to be available as early as 2015.

URBAN CHALLENGE

Driving in a city environment means the robot cars must not only detect obstacles, they must make sense of them.

“To be able to understand your environment, predict what happens next and be able to react when something goes slightly wrong—that is the most challenging,” said Stanford research engineer Mike Montemerlo, who spoke at the meeting.

Junior’s steering, throttle and brakes have been modified by engineers at the Volkswagen of America Electronics Research Laboratory in Palo Alto, California.

The car sports an array of sophisticated sensors, including a range-finding laser that provides a three-dimensional, 360-degree view of its surroundings in near real-time.

Junior’s computer “brain” is about four times more powerful than Stanley’s was in 2005.

To make the car “think,” about a dozen students, faculty and researchers at Stanford worked on software to manage driving tasks like perception, mapping and planning.

The location for the November 3 race will be announced in October. For the fastest car to navigate the course, the prize is $2 million—plus bragging rights.

NASCAR HAD ITS equivalent of the Final Four on Sunday — the event leading into “the event.”

Only in this case, nobody watched. I mean, nobody.

That’s not to say nobody cared. It’s just that nobody watched.

OK, somebody watched. According to the raters, 50,849 of the approximately 7.2 million people in the Bay Area — fewer than 1 in every 100 — were tuned into Channel 11 Sunday afternoon as Jimmie Johnson zoomed closer to the Nextel Cup championship.

There’s something wrong with that.

Actually, there are many things wrong. And here’s how I’d go about correcting those errors in time for this week’s finale of the NASCAR championship series:

Schedule the finale in primetime. Sunday’s Ford 400 in Miami is scheduled to go green just after noon — at which point the Raiders faithful will be engulfed in a winnable game at Minnesota, and Niners fans will be settling in for a duel with the rival Rams. To have a chance in this market, the race must start at 5 p.m.

- Move Sunday night’s Patriots-Bills game to Saturday night. This would have two benefits: 1) It would open the primetime slot on NBC’s Sunday schedule; and
2) It would provide a heckuva lot better lead-in than a Notre Dame football game.

- Change the name of the race. I’m sorry, but “Ford 400″ just doesn’t say “Super Bowl” to me. For crying out loud, there already was a UAW-Ford 500 race six weeks ago. Want a big reason why 7.15 million people here weren’t watching this past weekend’s penultimate race? It took longer to say “Checker Auto Parts 500 presented by Pennzoil” than for the No. 48 to take the lead.

Give Johnson’s competition a chance. It sounds as if the Chase leader will have to blow a tire on the way to the track to lose his 86-point lead over Jeff Gordon. NASCAR tweaked its scoring system this year, and it needs to do it again. Only bigger. Each race should be more about winning and less about not wanting to pass your teammate for fear of sending him spinning.

Bowling on the big screen

In case you’re wondering … yes, presuming you have ESPN, you will be able to see Cal’s less-than-glamorous bowl game next month. Yep, even if just 15,000 people make the trek across the bridge to witness the seventh-place ACC team in the rain three days after Christmas.

ESPN has that game — the Emerald Bowl — and two of the other three most likely destinations for the bumbling Bears: the Las Vegas Bowl on Dec. 22 and the Armed Forces Bowl on Dec. 31.

At this point, the best the Bears can aspire to be is a Sun Bowler on Dec. 31. CBS gets that one.

Worst thing I heard all week

“It’s over.” That’s what Jeff Gordon had to say about the Nextel Cup competition on the eve of the “Junk Car Jamboree”. Gotta say: I’m even less excited about watching now that I know it’s a boat race.

Electric motors and motor controllers play an important role in the future of space exploration, military operations, and environmental conservation. Consequently, federal agencies continue to invest in these technologies by funding projects that improve their performance and efficiency. This work will not only shape the future of these specific application areas, but will also have significant crossover into the commercial marketplace.

Autonomous robots are expected to free astronauts of routine and repetitive tasks (e.g., simple inspections, maintenance, scouting terrain, and gathering field samples) during future space exploration missions. Today’s Earth-bound technologies play a key role in the development and enhancement of these robots. One recent example is Thibodeaux (see Figure 1), a four-wheeled autonomous mobile robot being developed at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, for use in lunar and Mars missions.

Roughly the size of an all-terrain vehicle, Thibodeaux is designed to pre-scout areas for astronaut missions, and to carry heavier payloads for construction and in situ science tasks. The robot is directed by astronaut voice commands, and can be driven remotely using wireless communications and onboard video cameras. Four onboard, sealed lead-acid batteries provide power.

Currently reaching speeds of only 3 miles per hour (mph), one 1.8-kW electric motor (the patented 2x motor from WaveCrest Laboratories of Dulles, Virginia) is being outfitted into each wheel to enable speeds up to 30 mph. Originally designed for electric scooters, cargo scooters, and motorcycles with top speeds up to 37 mph, each motor will be current limited to produce 180 Newton-meters (Nm) of peak torque for the NASA project.

The permanent magnet, DC brushless motor (see Figure 2) has an inverted architecture - meaning the rotor surrounds and rotates around the center-mounted stator. The stator consists of a series of independently controlled electromagnets driven by a proprietary power electronics module. Conventional steel laminations are used as the stator core material. The rotor has rare earth-based permanent magnets and housings that are arranged in a proprietary design. Connected to the power electronics, a digital signal processor activates the electromagnets by analyzing motor position, desired torque, and the electrical characteristics of the energy management system powering the motor. Patented adaptive algorithms adjust the current and excitation sequence of each electrical phase.

“One of the key things about our technology is the patented software used in the integrated motor and control. It allows the motor to reconfigure itself within nanoseconds,” said Tim Hassett, vice president and general manger of motors and operations for WaveCrest Laboratories. “The software senses load such that it reconfigures the motor and allows it to run at an optimal performance while properly dissipating heat.” Integrating the motor and control also eliminates electric and magnetic field (EMF) issues and shortens cable lengths to reduce line chatter.

Additional customization is necessary for the NASA project mainly because Thibodeaux will be an all-wheel drive robot requiring communication among four-wheels, whereas the scooter only had a single wheel on the back drive. While specifics cannot be provided due to the nature of the work, software will be altered so that it works with the robot’s existing vehicle control and some of the components on the power board will be changed to better suit the application. According to Hassett, alterations to the housing or anything mechanical will not be necessary.

Military Operations

The U.S. military invests heavily in the development of technology aimed at reducing the number of causalities on the battlefield. Consequently, unmanned ground, air, and underwater vehicles receive ample attention and funding. In 2004, for instance, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) kicked-off its annual Grand Challenge in response to a Congressional and U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) mandate. The Grand Challenge aims to accelerate the research and development of autonomous ground vehicles (AGVs). More discrete projects have been taking place all over the country with assistance from programs like the DARPA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program for years.

Under a DARPA contract ThinGap Corporation of Ventura, California, has developed an 8.3-inch diameter brushless ring motor (the TG8250 motor) based on their patented electromotive coil design that replaces an iron core and wire windings with a free-standing, precision-machined copper sheet coil, see Figure 3. A version of this motor powers a ducted fan that has already successfully lifted an unmanned air vehicle (UAV) in initial tests. The unique feature of this lightweight thin ring motor (7.5” ID) is that the propeller is mounted inside of it.

Based on a Phase II SBIR contract granted by DARPA in October 2004, the company will be taking the technology a step further, adapting it into a larger, 14-inch model (see Figure 4) for use as a potential electric-drive in a six-wheel, unmanned ground vehicle (UGV). The UGV could be used for a variety of missions, including hauling equipment, detecting land mines, and land assault. Application requirements include high torque at start up - 1,200 ft-lbs at 28 rpm for 500 seconds (8.33 minutes) and high speed at 260 rpm with efficient heat dissipation. The application requires 6.5 hp constant power output throughout the power curve.

According to Greg Graham, ThinGap’s vice president and chief technology officer, a key difference between the original motor and the UGV motor will be the capability to integrate a gearbox inside the ring motor, resulting in a very thin and lean assembly. “Gearboxes help electric motors perform in vehicles. It traditionally requires a lot more motor, if you will, when you have to direct drive,” said Graham. “Here we can have the entire motor assembly built into this one plane with a large, 12-inch through hole for all of the drive mechanics such as gear reduction, ball bearings, brakes, and everything else. Conventional motors usually have too much material within the motor to do this.”

Graham also noted that the unique freestanding coil allows the magnet assembly to be more efficient: Eliminating laminations gets rid of the iron losses typical of conventional brushless motors. The only remaining parasitic losses are the eddy current losses (AC losses), which are minimized by the coil design. An optimal thermal path dissipates the remaining I^sup 2^R heat more efficiently, allowing the motor to perform at high power output levels.

Conservation

Growing concerns regarding the price of fossil fuels and the environmental impact of using them to generate power have prompted many motor and control manufacturers to look at new ways of gaining efficiency. “If you can enhance performance and get more power out of the motor without added cost, it will have a big impact,” said Dr. George Rolling, chief engineer at Raser Technologies in Provo, Utah, a motor and controller technology licensing company. “If you can improve energy consumption of motors by just a few percent, the overall savings to the economy and total energy consumption are tremendous numbers.”

More stringent performance requirements have prompted a continuous trend toward variable speed drive, intensifying the relationship between controller and motor. “Our Symetron(TM) technology changes how you design and control the motor, so both the motor and controller are improved,” said David West, Raser Technologies’ vice president of marketing. (Symetron collectively refers to patent-pending pieces of technology that are selectively applied based on the motor or controller type.) According to West, the technology’s other advantage in the marketplace is that it can be manufactured in existing facilities with existing technologies.

With an Energy Conversion Science grant from the State Technologies Advancement Collaborative (STAC) of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the company is now mid-way through a project aimed at creating a universal motor controller. The company expects to meet the specifications while achieving the targeted efficiency improvement of 2 percent. “The FLEXMOD(TM) controller applies our Symetron technology and packages it into a universal controller that can drive a lot of different motors. That’s the key to creating economy of scale,” explained West. “We are hoping that the availability of a universal, high-efficiency controller will let prices come down so that a lot more applications will be controller driven.”

Targeting electric-powered transportation vehicles (e.g., electric buses, industrial trucks, and hybrid electric vehicles) for the DOE project, additional applications range from industrial pumps and motors to washing machines and air conditioners.