KINSTON - For one second, as the blue Lotus Elise takes off for a test run around the parking lot, five engineering students forget the Coke can one of them left on the engine block.

Then the can tips over, and they shout a collective "Whoa!"

Fizzy brown cola gurgles onto three or four white Mac Mini computers, two black ethernet adapter boxes and a multicolor tangle of cables packed in the sports car's engine compartment. The driver hits the brakes.

Grayson Randall lets out a chuckle.

"China Syndrome! China Syndrome!" he cries, eyes twinkling, as the students grab towels to mop up their mistake. Randall is recalling the 1979 Jane Fonda movie about what can happen when a careless engineer spills cola in a nuclear plant control room: near meltdown.

Randall is president of Insight Racing, a volunteer team of students and engineers that has spent four years preparing for a robot-car contest called the DARPA Grand Challenge. The Pentagon-sponsored competition, with $3.5 million in prizes, will culminate over the next two weeks at an abandoned air base in California.

A dozen team members are spending one last weekend tinkering with the little Lotus, nicknamed Lone Wolf, at a Kinston airport hangar. Their leader handles the soda spill calmly, and he makes sure they learn from it.

"Remember that drinks and computers don't go well together," says Randall, 52, of Cary. "Before you move the car, check for loose tools and drinks and stuff. Get a screwdriver rolling around, and it could cause a lot of damage."

In his day job as a senior software engineer at IBM, Randall directs teams of professional programmers in software development projects. He has nine patents to his credit.

He spends nights and weekends working with high school and college students. Although he has tapped the skills of professionals in the Triangle and other states, students form the heart of his robot car venture.

For about six years, Randall mentored a Southeast Raleigh High School robotics team that was one of the top winners out of 880 teams in a 2004 international competition.

"I can guarantee you that, without Grayson's drive, they would never have achieved what they achieved," says Tom K. Miller, a vice provost at NCSU. "It had a huge impact on a number of the students."

Some of them, including Miller's son, Kenan, went on to study engineering at N.C. State University. In 2003, when the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced its competition to help design robotic vehicles for use on battlefields, Randall assembled a team of NCSU students he had mentored at Southeast Raleigh High.

"I started thinking it would be a fun project to take on," he says. "I had the opportunity to go hand-pick some of my best students."

Real-world software

The Lone Wolf effort has also included the work of a few dozen computer science undergraduates. Since 2004, Randall has commissioned nine software projects through a program that involves seniors in real-world corporate assignments.

"After he's worked all day with IBM, in the evening he comes over to the campus, and he'll sit down with a group of students to lay it out," says Robert J. Fornaro, who directs NCSU's Senior Design Center. "In his mind, he has carved up everything, and what he has to do to get leverage out of the student teams."

Students in Fornaro's program have designed programs to track the robot car, use lasers to detect obstacles, run the car's complicated computer network and chart the quickest, safest path to its destination.

Randall won national recognition for his work with students in September. He received a "citation of honor" from IEEE-USA, a professional engineering group with 235,000 members.

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