School of Mines in Top Quarter in Robotics Competition
The South Dakota School of Mines and Technology robotics team placed in the top 25 percent out of 32 teams at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Region 5 competition in San Antonio, Texas.The School of Mines entered three robots. Two successfully scored points, with Robot 1 placing sixth and Robot 2 placing seventh. Robot 3, while not successful in scoring points, received a special award for technical creativity.
“The participating students not only learn technical skills, but also leadership, project management and teaming skills,” team advisor and electrical and computer engineering professor Dr. Michael Batchelder said. “The skills that lead to success in the competition also lead to success on the job after graduation.”
This competition theme was “Straighten This Mess Up.” The competition course was a mock-up of an automated warehouse. Competitors had to construct an autonomous robot that would recognize different colored containers on one side of a track, and be able to sort them into their destination rooms on the other side of the track. For example, the robot would proceed to a room on one side of the track, search for and recognize that container’s color and then placed the container in its appropriate place on the opposite side of the track. The robot also had to have the following features:
• Drive system for motion
• Navigation sensor array to move from one room to another
• Sensing element to differentiate between different colored containers
• Manipulator to handle the container
• Processor/software to coordinate all of these elements
Each competitor had 2 runs of the course, each run being limited to a period of 3 minutes. Each robot was scored during this time for how fast, and how accurately it accomplished the task at hand.
Also, Justin Kasemodel, electrical engineering, Sioux Falls, placed second in the Student Paper Contest.
