The Grandville Academic Team Boosters are all set to host the Third Annual American River Race on 22 October at Grandville, Michigan. Twelve high school teams will be participating in the contest. TRAXXAS is sponsoring the event this year.
Great Autonomous Boat Race
The students will have to build and program boats which will take on a 3 mile journey on the race course prepared by the Grandville Academic Team Boosters and the Michigan High School Robotics Association. The participating teams have spent close to seven weeks modifying and programming the boats for the race.
The teams will be using equipment which is far more sophisticated and advanced electronics to build their boats so that speeds greater than 50mph could be achieved during the race. The boats will be fully autonomous and controlled with the help of computers. They will have to overcome water current, wind and other natural hurdles. The components used for modifying the boats have been acquired from across the world.
The boats measure 48 inches in length and are driven by large brushless water-cooled motors. For navigating the boats, precise GPS systems provided by Garmin have been used. The Grandville High School students have built the 32-bit processor that runs at 1000MHz speed for controlling the boats. Custom Electronics has provided the teams with highly sophisticated and customised electronic control systems.