WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6 | SERVING TEXAS A&M SINCE 1893 | © 2017 STUDENT MEDIA
Iraq Panel pg. 4
Library Resources pg. 3
The self-driving shuttle of Texas A&M Ph.D. candidate and team are creating a driverless shuttle By Savannah Mehrtens @SJMehrtens Autonomous shuttles, once thought to be a thing of the future, are becoming a realistic feat. On Sept. 1, Texas began enforcing a law that allows autonomous shuttles to drive on all roadways. At Texas A&M, the mechanical engineering department has already begun the process of creating an autonomous shuttle. Doctoral student Garrison Neel is building the autonomous shuttle at A&M with the help of mechanical engineering seniors Amir Darwesh and Quang Le, advised by associate engineering professor Srikanth Saripalli. This program was introduced to the university last October, but extensive progress has been made since. The shuttle’s top speed is 25 mph in order to remain classified as a slow moving vehicle, and to have the ability to drive on pedestrian sidewalks. “We usually operate somewhere in the range of 10 to 15 miles an hour,” Neel said.
“It doesn’t seem like a good thing to increase the speed, especially since we are going to be operating around so many pedestrians, mostly for safety. The faster you go, the faster you have to react and the harsher you have to react, so for a smooth comfortable ride, probably won’t be going too much faster.” The LIDAR system acts as the eyes of the machine. Running at 10 Hertz per second, the LIDAR system sends out laser beams to collect data to find objects such as people, poles and statues and stop the vehicle at such data points. “It sends out a bunch of laser beams into the world and gets them back, and we look through all that data to find stuff like people and mark them on the screen and slow down for them if we need to,” Neel said. LIDAR is currently the only system on the shuttle, but there are plans to add a vision system. Darwesh is working on the LIDAR and vision system for the shuttle, which is composed of stereo cameras that recognize depth for pedestrian and obstacle detection. “Eventually we have plans to use vision for people detection and obstacles, which will kind of combine both systems,” Darwesh said. “Stereo cameras allow you to see depth as well instead of just looking a 3-D image, you can
Savannah Mehrtens — THE BATTALION
Ph.D. candidate Garrison Neel (right) and mechanical engineering seniors Amir Darwesh (center) and Quang Le (left) work together to build the first autonomous shuttle.
see perception.” Le is working on creating a system to initiate communication between the pedestrians with both visual and auditory methods. “So we have the screens and the speakers
and when the vehicle is going, it will display a message saying the vehicle is going and that you shouldn’t go in front of the vehicle,” Le DRIVERLESS ON PG. 2
WILD ART
Aggie Ring Donated On the night of her Silver Taps, the parents of Caroline Killian ‘18 posthumously donated her Aggie Ring to the class of 2018 at the Association of Former Students.
Laura Haslam — THE BATTALION
Looking to the road ahead Head coach Kevin Sumlin discussed the loss to UCLA and what the team will be doing to move forward to the rest of the season.
Cassie Stricker — THE BATTALION
Sumlin, Kirk discuss the loss to UCLA, injuries and this Saturday’s game By Ryan MacDonald @Ryan_MacDonald2 After a tough defeat, the first thing on an athlete’s mind is when they can get back on the field and get back to work to improve and avenge their shortcomings. Unfortunately, this is not possible for quar-
terback Nick Starkel and defensive back Donovan Wilson, both of whom had surgery to repair a fractured ankle and left foot, respectively. There is no timetable for the return of either of these two players and their return this season is questionable, leaving big shoes to fill for whoever head coach Kevin Sumlin decides to start in their place. True freshman Kellen Mond played a couple of series in the first half before taking over for Starkel in the second half after Starkel went down. Mond’s lack of experience at the col-
legiate level showed, as he completed only three out of his 17 passes for 27 yards. Despite Mond’s sub-par start as an Aggie, junior receiver Christian Kirk is confident Mond will continue to progress and come into his own. “He’s going to have to do a great job in his game preparation and just go out there and execute against Nicholls,” Kirk said. “There were flashes on Sunday that we all saw, he definitely has a bright future.” The role Mond will play in Saturday’s game is unclear, as Sumlin said he will not announce a starter until Saturday. “It’s the same situation as last week, we’ve got to get both guys ready to go since Nick’s not available,” Sumlin said. Sumlin also added that it is very likely that both Mond and senior quarterback Jake Hubenak will play this weekend and in the next couple games ahead. The loss of Wilson will force senior defensive back Armani Watts to step up and take more of a leadership role. “I’m going to have young guys next to me, so I’m going to have to let them know where they need to be and also help them to handle the pressure,” Watts said. “Losing Donovan is big, but we have guys to step in and play, that’s part of this game.” Despite the gut-wrenching loss, Sumlin said he wants to focus on the positive aspects of the UCLA game and pointed to the Aggies strong play from the running game, particularly in the first half when the Aggies combined
for 286 rushing yards. The second half was significantly different for the Aggie rushing attack, as UCLA stacked the box and forced Mond to throw the ball downfield. This schematic change paid dividends for UCLA, and will likely be replicated by the Aggies’ future opponents. “We know that they know now, they’re going to load the box on us and force Kellen to be a complete quarterback,” Sumlin said. Moving forward, Sumlin will reflect on what went wrong Sunday during practice this afternoon and then put it behind them and start preparing for their game against Nicholls this Saturday. “Today will be our first time to review video and talk about the positive and the negatives from Sunday night,” Sumlin said. “But this afternoon will be the last time we talk about UCLA from a lot of different facets.” Though heavy underdogs in the game, Sumlin knows that Nicholls is not a team to be overlooked due to their talent on offense and their experience in big games and electric venues. “They’re very similar to us offensively, really balanced. They’ve got a couple receivers outside that can really go, their quarterback has been really effective,” Sumlin said. “They’re coming off a win, they’re not going to be intimidated coming in here. They’re going to PRESSER ON PG. 2
Texas A&M Ph.D. candidate and team could rewrite history Site in central Florida shows signs of humans and mammoths co-existing By Savannah Mehrtens @SJMehrtens Despite conventional wisdom stating the opposite, research currently being done by a Texas A&M doctoral student may show that over 12,000 years ago, humans and Columbian mammoths may have co-existed at the same time. Morgan Smith, an A&M doctoral student in anthropology and student in the Center for the Study of the First Americans, has spent the past three years doing research and collecting material from the Guest Mammoth underwater site at the Silver River in central Florida with a grant from the Felburn Foundation in Florida. In the early 1970s, Charles Hoffman, a professor at the University of Florida, was informed about bones found at Guest Mammoth, named after a truck driver in the area that reached out to an amateur archeologist after he found multiple bones while scuba div-
ing. Hoffman brought a team of students with him to the site, where they conducted the first underwater archeological dive excavation in the Americas and found what is believed to be a mammoth kill site, based on stone tools and bone markings. His reports were turned away by the scientific community because dating technology would not progress enough for accurate information for another 20 years. “He was so pioneering he was limited by the science at the time, because he got radiocarbon dates on the mammoth bones and they came out to about 11,500 years old,” Smith said. “But the problem is that he dated the protein in the animal bones.” Until the turn of the century, the necessary technology to hyper-purify the animal bone protein was not available, which caused results to show a younger date for Hoffman. The rejections he received from the scientific community caused him to quit archeology and move to the Caribbean. For close to 40 years, no one went back to the site. Now, Smith and his team are working with technology that will provide accuMAMMOTH ON PG. 2
Courtesy of Morgan Smith
Morgan Smith, a doctoral student at Texas A&M, researched the Guest Mammoth site in Florida for two years.