Lead Personnel

Ben Patz - (Team Leader)

Mr. Patz co-founded CTI and oversees all operations at the company. He is also a systems engineer with 20 years experience in system analysis, design and testing. CTI specializes in systems analysis and modeling, information system design and development of customized hardware and software solutions for converged information system environments involving real-time signal processing. Mr. Patz has been a principal investigator for multiple SBIR grants and has also received numerous professional awards including Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year for Florida.

The real scoop: Pays for everything

Most memorable event: Team Insight sponsor (Lotus) shows up in our pit and says "I am impressed with how well your car drives".

 

Don Harper - (Lead Engineer) -

Engineer in charge of systems, sub-systems, design, integration and testing for the University of Central Florida’s 2007 Urban Challenge project. Mr. Harper has more than 20 years of experience in Simulation and Modeling, Systems Integration, and Testing in research areas including vision systems, simulation, embedded computing, wireless networking, robotics and controls. Don successfully lead the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge TeamUCF and participated in all aspects of the specification, design, implementation, and testing of the vehicle. Mr. Harper’s expertise made possible the successful showing in the NQE.

The real scoop: If anything physical breaks, its fixed!

Most memorable event: It can't be that late, my black-berry says so

Sensor Fusion & Lasers

Ph.D. student in the Computational Imaging Lab (CIL) under the advice of Dr. Hassan Foroosh. In 2004, Remo was one of the first members of UCF's Grand Challenge Team. During the qualification and contest period of the DARPA Grand Challenge 2005, he was the Chief Software Developer for UCF's autonomous car. His current graduate work involves research in the area of 3D Robot Vision, Laser-Camera fusion and GPS-denied Robot Navigation.
The real scoop: We see the culmination of 1 year of work and 1 morning of hacks.
Most memorable event: The porta-potties? They are nice...

Intelligence

Dr. Yiannis Papelis -

Dr. Papelis is a Research Associate Professor at Old Dominion University at the Virginia Modeling Analysis & Simulation Center (VMASC). Before joining ODU, Dr. Papelis spent a year as visiting faculty at UCF, during which time he got involved in the DUC project. Before UCF, Dr. Papelis was the Chief Technical Officer at the National Advanced Driving Simulator at the Univ. of Iowa, where he conducted traffic safety research and worked extensively on agent based modeling of traffic, virtual environment modeling 3D visualization, and operator-in-the-loop simulator. Dr. Papelis has led numerous research projects related to transportation safety using human-in-the-loop simulation, and has been active in various national and international committees. Dr. Papelis is responsible for the Artificial Intelligence component of KnightRider.

The real scoop: His AI drives better than he does ...

Most memorable event: One hour before the start of the run: "Oops, I never wrote the code to do left yield behavior ..."

Gary Stein -

Gary is a PhD student in Computer Engineering under the supervision of Dr. Avelino Gonzalez doing research in creating autonomous agents using Observational Learning. He is the President of the Robotics Club at UCF and was a member of the 2005 Darpa Grand Challenge Team. He is mainly responsible for the Path Planning, Throttle Control, and Simulation.

The real scoop: Thinks everyone else is wrong (we call it constructive criticism)

Most memorable event: Driving 6 hours through Arizona to find tires for the trailer ... patterned after linked lists ... "no I don't have tires, but Bob does" ... "no we don't have them, Shannon does".

Vision

David Lyle - Ph.D. student in the Computer Vision Lab under the advice of Dr. Lobo. Prior to entering the Ph.D. program, Mr. Lyle worked for over 18 years in software development, most recently designing and developing systems for manufacturing test automation. His current research is learning MRF-based image segmentation.

Andrew Miller -
B.S. student in the Computer Vision Lab under Dr. Mubarak Shah. He studies visual control of ground vehicles and UAVs, as well as hardware implementations of computer vision algorithms.
The real scoop: He is 6' 0" tall, and jogs at exactly 5 miles per hour. He is primarily used for calibrating the Doppler radar.
Most memorable event: Designing the bot's Halloween costume.