Danielle Castley, Mike Sehi, Tom Mayer (MEM undergrads), and Noah Kuntz (ECE undergrad) proudly represented Drexel on Saturday, April 25th and placed 2nd in Penn State Abington's Mini Grand Challenge 2009- Autonomous Outdoor Robot Challenge & Robot Exhibit.

The Mini Grand Challenge outdoor robot contest challenges mobile, ground robots to autonomously navigate paths throughout the suburban campus of Penn State Abington College while avoiding obstacles and tackling off-road detours.  Robots must carry a 1-gallon container of water, and each robot must attempt to "entertain" spectators.  The objective of this contest is to promote advances in engineering design, computer technologies, artificial intelligence, and robotics education.  This contest was partly inspired by the DARPA Grand Challenge robot initiative to spark innovation in intelligent robot vehicles.

Advised by Dr. Paul Oh, the team based their vehicle on a small electric ATV, which was modified so that the steering and brakes were actuated by servos, and the motor speed could be accurately controlled.  The sensors used were a camera for computer vision, an ultrasonic range finder, GPS, and encoders on the wheels.  The control was performed on a laptop computer with a program written in Visual C++.  The vehicle tracked the path and controlled the steering with computer vision, stopped at any obstacle with using the ultrasonic rangefinder, regulated its speed with the encoders and the brake, and used GPS to recognize the waypoints along the course.