SAMPE Journal - November/December 2016 - 63

Perspectives

Steven Rodgers
SAMPE Past President and
Consultant, EmergenTek LLC
Steven.R@EmergenTek.com

Looking Over My Shoulder
"I have nothing to say, and I'll only say it once." - NHL Hockey coach Floyd Smith

It is November and we are now accelerating toward the end of the year. This installment of Perspectives marks the end of my
fifth year of writing this column for the SAMPE Journal. I appreciate having had the opportunity to share my observations on the
interplay of history, culture and technology. I thank you for your emails and for the thoughtful comments that have turned this
column into more of a dialog than a monolog.
In the last five years many things have changed in our technical landscape and many have stayed the same. Space prevents
me from a comprehensive exploration of those things, but a couple of the changes stand out.
The first two Perspectives columns jointly addressed where SAMPE might participate in the energy markets1. Traditionally people
have answered that question by framing the discussion with this question: "What kinds of composites serve those markets?"
The responses were not, "What new materials (including composites) must be developed to serve those markets."
In those columns I segregated our global energy development challenges into four basic categories: Energy creation, energy
transportation, energy storage and energy conservation. In the five years since the first Perspectives column this list has not
changed. These apply to any kind of energy, whether is created from petroleum, the sun, the wind, the waves or any number
of sources.
So what meaningful role does SAMPE play in energy development? Does it only consist of composite materials or can it be
much more? The same is true of energy transportation, storage and conservation. To broaden the discussion, is SAMPE's
contribution to the world of materials and processes simply composites or will it become so much more?
I am pleased to report that SAMPE is taking active steps to be involved in more areas of materials development. Through the
activities of the Emerging Technologies Task Force2 and the Technical Excellence Committees3, you will see that each is addressing a number of new technologies and incorporating them into our conferences. Between the two committees more than
two dozen volunteers are contributing. If you have ideas on adjacent materials, processes or markets, please feel free to contact the committee chairs directly and offer your thoughts and ideas. You can find their contact information in the members'
directory on the SAMPE website at https://sampe.site-ym.com
On a different front we have the rapidly-evolving world of autonomous vehicles. When I began this column we were largely
limited in our conversations to aerial vehicles. Automotive vehicles were still the purview of science fiction writers and DARPA4.
AT the time I began writing Perspectives we were only a few years beyond the first DARPA Grand Challenge for autonomous
land vehicles, a race through the California and Nevada desert. In the first challenge the race course was 240 km (150 mi.) and
of all the competitors, the best competitor made it a grueling 11.78 km (7.32 mi.) before getting hung up on a rock on a hairpin
turn. The following year, the second Grand Challenge yielded five teams who completed the course with all but one of the 23
teams surpassing the 11.78 km (7.32 mi.) record set the previous year.
In early 2012 I passed an odd looking Lexus coming from the opposite direction. It had a roof rack with a spinning mechanism
on the top and was being followed by a line of cars. They were honking their horns because the vehicle was holding to the
45 mph (72 km) posted speed limit. It was a Google experimental autonomous vehicle. The research in autonomous vehicles
had progressed quickly and quietly up to that point, largely outside the public eye. Today there are driverless Uber taxis in
Philadelphia.
And as for unmanned aerial vehicles, we now call them drones despite our efforts to preserve the more accurate term "UAV".
And we have moved from the silly novelty (at the time) of delivering food via the Burrito Bomber to Amazon assembling the
infrastructure for massive delivery of goods by drone.
It has been a fascinating five years. What changes and constants have you observed during that time? I would like to hear
your thoughts.

1 The World of the Future: What is SAMPE's Material Contribution? (Parts 1 and 2), SAMPE Journal "Perspectives", January/February and March/April 2012
2 Robert Yancey, Chair
3 Ted Lynch, Chair
4 The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
SAMPE Journal, Volume 52, No. 6, November/December 2016

https://sampe.site-ym.com

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