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DARPA Urban Challenge

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Admin:
ive considered in the past using internet collaboration in building robots with people around the world . . . but decided it just wouldnt work due to communication difficulties. you can always have a ring of advisors through the internet (such as this forum), but found the best way to hash out design details is for everyone to be in the same room.

your project is even more complex, with software engineers, electrical engineers, and mechanical engineers all coming from different schools of thought . . . how do you get them to work together through internet alone?

pgrayson, I am curious about your thoughts on this problem, and solutions you have found to it . . .

pgrayson:
The books I have read on the subject of distributed work force and cottage industry all made it sound like it would be the best of the two worlds.   Later publications and practical experience by large companies who tried to make it work for years have found that it didn't work as well as advertised.  Most companies have abandoned the idea and no longer offer it as an option to their employees.

It turns out to be more difficult to administer than originally estimated.
The people are about half as productive as they would be if they were in the same room.
People who opt for working by internet often find that they miss the social aspects of showing up in person at a work place, even they didn't realize this would be important to them until they tried it for a while.

There are workarounds for these problems.
These work arounds are in addition to the projects work load.

If you are considering organizing a project this way you must ask yourself if your reason for doing it this way is good enough to offset the drawbacks.  Edison found that the most effective/efficient way to get high tech projects done was to put everyone in the same room literally.

In my case the people I need are where ever they are and the hours they can work are what ever is available outside of their regular jobs.  That leaves me with trying to figure out how to make it work.  I am breaking new ground with some of the things we are doing - organization wise. 

A Virtual reality collaborative workspace is something that might be worth looking into.  My work in VR was a long time ago and things have improved a lot since then. 

Any suggestions about how to make it work better?

JonHylands:

--- Quote from: Cognaut on November 25, 2006, 12:20:37 PM ---I'd better focus on my own work because I think JonHylands is catching up to me.  hehe.

--- End quote ---

Catching up?

I'm going to have a walking biped robot using the motion control part of my AI brain by late spring...  ;D

- Jon (busy writing a Squeak/gumstix driver for the Bioloid serial bus...)

Militoy:
Paul, from experience, I have to concur with you that trying to run a “distributed” team, and keep it on task, is an enormous challenge to overcome. We tried at our company for awhile to run our Manufacturing processes out of one plant, and our Engineering out of another (just a few miles away), with less than satisfactory results – the logistics just slowed everything down. The Urban Challenge team I work on is basically concentrated in one city, but with several important elements located in another state. Our main solutions are extensive travel expenses, and dual test vehicles. As far as pulling your team together and organizing tasks – I believe that in order to be competitive in this next challenge, you will have to be actively testing and integrating your software and sensors 24/7 by the end of this year.

pgrayson:
cognaut,
I know what you mean.  Luckily you can use some of your screen time to look for a job, postings and apply buttons are now common.  Of course just walking into a business near by and saying to the person in charge that you want to work there works a lot better than resumes and interviews.

JonHylands,
Will your biped be something you will market and sell?

Miltoy,
Team members travel is at their own expense here.  One guy wanted to work for us if we flew him from Europe twice a month - we had to pass on that.  We have multiple vehicles and oddly, clusters of team members in some towns.  Each joined individually not knowing there were others in the same town already on the team.  We are more focused on the engineering problem and its sequential steps than a deadline or being the winner.  We are also looking at what the production version will look like and how it will be operated in the field.

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