Meet Inventor Douglas Palmer, Calit2 Principal Development Engineer
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7.30.03 - "I've worked at 15 startups in the same number of years," says new principal development engineer at Calit²'s UCSD Division, Doug Palmer. "I love startups but somehow I keep coming back to UCSD - it's a great 'cosmic attractor.' Calit² is like an industrial startup - but much better. In industry, you have to focus on a product, but here we focus on building an institution and solving problems for mankind."
On the job now for a mere three weeks, Palmer describes his role at Calit² as building a center of excellence in network embedded systems. This involves being an inventor, technology integrator, and extrovert, i.e., a technical person charged with bringing in new projects and partners. The "inventor" part is especially apt as Palmer has more than a dozen patents, some still pending, in digital signal processing, imaging technologies, networking, and video. "I like to find solutions to problems that involve digital signal processing," he says.
With a fairly open-ended charter at Calit², Palmer has lots of ideas of stimulating projects to occupy his attention, particularly projects to improve the quality of life.
For example, one way to make a difference, says Palmer, is figuring out ways to eliminate wasted resources. "Consider a sprinkler system," he says. "What happens when it's raining and the sprinkler is still on? You have to run out - in the rain - to turn it off. Or what if it's foggy for a week and the plants are still being watered when they don't need it? Maybe you're on vacation and don't even realize there's a problem."
Instead, why not equip sprinklers with antenna to receive the evapotranspiration index from a state agency, enabling the sprinklers to make smart decisions about how much water to deliver? "Calit² is the perfect place to demonstrate such a proof of concept, which could be turned into a market standard," he says
The idea of standards, where he's convinced Calit² can have an important impact, causes Palmer to turn to another topic he finds interesting. Consider this problem: Small businesses don't know how to reach large numbers of people because they don't have the funds to advertise widely. Ironically, they seem to have a hard time reaching their immediate community, which is likely to be their best customer base.
Given that, assume there's a standard established about how to publish information about small business services on the Web that could be picked up usefully by a search engine. If you ran a drycleaner and wanted to advertise your business to people living in your neighborhood, all you'd need to do is publish your information according to the standard. Then that information could be mined and put into a database that could be searched and cross-correlated by a potential customer's address to find a proximity match and lead to business from a guy who lives on a neighboring street who, for whatever reason, hasn't been on the street where the drycleaner is and doesn't know it's there. For him, this is a new discovery and a major convenience. And, because of this success, he's likely to use the Internet again to identify additional needed local services. "This is another cottage industry in the making," envisions Palmer. "There are so many similar services that haven't been implemented that we technologists can support. That's why Calit² is going to make a big difference."
In the past, Palmer worked on the world's largest excimer laser (for missile defense), adaptive optics, CCD imagers, satellite communications (at Linkabit), medical ultrasound and X-ray imaging systems, anesthesia monitors, neural networks, and free-space laser communications systems. He co-founded Path1 Network Technologies, Inc., with UCSD professor Ron Fellman, which today is churning out specialized video-over-IP equipment for cable companies to deliver entertainment-on-demand.
Palmer has at least a couple of intense hobbies he shared that reflect and complement his professional engagement as a died-in-the-wool inventor. He tells me there's a group in San Diego, led by an ex-UCSD physics professor, that wants to enter the DARPA grand challenge road race for robotic vehicles to travel from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. In a race set for March 2004, the grand prize winner takes away $1M. Palmer is talking with UCSD professors and Los Osos Locos (The Crazy Bears, in Spanish, a group in town that specializes in off-road racing and engineering) to put together teams for this competition. (For more information, see http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/.)
This interest in competition is no coincidence. Palmer, a sailor in his free time, created a software sailing simulator for Dennis Conner in 1992. It accurately modeled all the forces and interactions between a sailboat and the wind and ocean.
But Palmer hasn't finished with the competition front, nor sailing broadly conceived. Extending his inventor skills to wider-ranging domains, he's now the chair of the Autonomous Model Yacht Racing Competition. He's overseeing this competition, set for late 2004, for competitors to sail their model boats from San Diego to Tahiti - yes, you read that correctly: model boats across the Pacific Ocean. And did I mention that no human intervention is allowed during the sail? How could that be possible? "Well, it's an experiment at the edge of what's been done before," says Palmer with a laugh.
The main requirement for entries is that the boats not exceed 10 kilograms. They can be equipped with GPS, satellite communications, model (software) "brains" to determine their optimal route based on weather and other information they receive en route, and be powered by the sun and the wind. They need to have everything on board they will need to arrive at their destination. "The ocean is a harsher environment than 'sojourning' on Mars," says Palmer, "so this falls into the category of the 'ultimate test.'"
According to Palmer, Charlie Kennel, director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, says this is one of the most intriguing ideas that's come across his desk. The competition is open to anyone, and high school students are particularly encouraged to compete (UCSD's Jacobs School of Engineering is forming a team).
What's so interesting about this activity, according to Palmer, is its unusually broad interdisciplinarity: "It spans energy, sailing, oceanography, robotics, aerodynamics, communications - they're all involved," he says. Palmer hopes for hundreds of entries. And his UCSD colleague Clark Guest is designing a processor board that could be replicated for high schools to build entries.
Says Palmer, "We're expecting the entries will be outfitted with all kinds of sensors - for temperature and wind - and relay that data back to the SIO Visualization Center to enable remote spectators to watch the competition in real time. Now that I think about it, this competition is likely too to change the notion of what it means to spectate."