The Robotics team from Morehead State University has won the third place at the Autonomous/Tele-Operated Robotic Manipulator Contest, which was conducted by the Annual Convention of the Association of Technology, Management and Applied Engineering (ATMAE).
AET Robotics team, from left, Allen Eden, Joey Chasteen, Linsday Lancaster
The event, which was held in Cleveland saw participation from seven other teams from various Universities across the United States.
The robotics team from MSU developed a hybrid tele-operated, autonomous robot, which was capable of picking and sorting ping-pong balls based on their colour. After travelling a short distance under remote control the robot, was required to first search a target area containing ping-pong balls on its own. After locating the balls, the robot was required to collect as many balls as possible and classify them by colour and place them in the designated containers. After the robot completed its operation the teams submitted a technical report which provided details on the electronics and control strategies along with a poster that displayed the robot. The AET team received the second place in the task portion and third overall. The prizes for the third place included high-end 3D software, textbooks, Parallax robotics kits, cash prize and a trophy. The student representative on the ATMMAE board was Jared May, a graduate student who had competed in the graduate research competition held at master’s and doctorate levels. May had to give a 30 minute presentation about his on-going research which is titled ‘Fatigue Analysis and Design of Coronary Stents using Implicit and Explicit Finite Element Analysis’ as part of the competition. He was declared the winner at the contest where he won a cash prize and an award plaque. May will be publishing his research as an article in the Robot Magazine, the magazine will also highlight the proceedings of the student’s robotic competition.