Marston Muses-Fall 1999-Research


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The sky is the limit for the Harmisons

Photo above: Outfitting the Harmison’s car for a 1,300-mile adventure are Esther and Herb Harmison (standing) with
Jeff Lanning and Brian Moorhead, EE4, of Team PrISUm.

Imagine driving on secondary roads from Washington, D.C., to Orlando, Florida, with Global Positioning System (GPS) and Differential Global Positioning System (DGPS) receivers on the roof of your car
and a video camera suctioned to the front windshield. You look a bit like a storm chaser or maybe even an alien chaser!

Yet that’s exactly what retired Engineering Placement Director Herb Harmison, BSME’62, MSME’68, and his wife Esther Harmison did. In the true spirit of generosity, they volunteered to give Iowa State’s solar car team a strategic edge.

During a presentation to an ISU retirees group, Team PrISUm strategy team leader Jeff Lanning, CprE 3, said it would be a huge help to the team to have the time and money to conduct a detailed survey of the Sunrayce 99 race route prior to the event. The Harmisons were so impressed with the team that they offered to do it for them!

The Harmisons understand the importance of strategy in a race. “Our son is a sports car racer,” Herb said. “When he comes to an unfamiliar track, the first thing he does is walk around it or drive it slowly, so he knows where the bumps and curves are.”

In a matter of five weeks, team members modified a broken video camera, secured equipment donations, and developed a program that records the latitude, longitude, and time into a GPS log file, and then uses dual tone modulated frequencies (DTMF) to encode that time on the audio track of the videotape.

When team members review the 40 hours of videotapes, they will catalog road signs, speed limits, tree cover, traffic density, and road conditions, using software that they developed.

“When we see something on the video like a road sign, the DTMF tones give us the exact time the Harmisons passed that point. We can look up that time stamp in the GPS log files, pinpoint the location, and add the information to the database we developed,” said Lanning. The team’s database contains the Sunrayce route in latitude and longitude and U.S. Geological Survey terrain information.

The Harmisons drove the 1,300 miles in a few days, visiting friends along the way and enjoying the scenery and small towns away from the interstates. “I’m so glad we volunteered to do this,” Esther said of their adventure. “It’s more fun than anything!”

Rockwell Collins donated the GPS equipment; ISU Scientist Sam Wormley donated the OmniSTAR DGPS, with OmniSTAR providing considerable support; and Hewlett Packard supplied the laptop computer.

“The data the Harmisons gathered gives us key missing pieces which are critical to our strategy system. The Harmisons’ efforts are the equivalent of a very large donation, because this is so valuable to us,” Lanning said. “Plus it shows a lot of heart on their part.”