YCP competes in Intelligent Ground Vehicle Challenge

Update from Jim Kearns:

The weekend went more or less as expected. That is, we had some success but also significant difficulties as did the few other first-year teams at the Intelligent Ground Vehicle Challenge (IGVC).

On the positive side, our vehicle did move, it was able to detect the painted lines on the grassy field and stay within the lane marked by those lines, it went up and over a ramp on the course, and demonstrated that it could detect an obstacle (an orange and white highway barrel) in the midst of the lane while still staying in the lane.

Our vehicle was also very well received by the technical judges in terms of the extent of engineering design apparent in the vehicle. The IGVC has not yet released the final design scoring but we did receive many compliments and quite a few observers spent a good deal of time at our station inquiring about we built such an interesting and sharp vehicle.  Our vehicle was significantly different from all other vehicles at the competition, particularly in terms of the amount of detailed hardware design. A large majority of the other vehicles used off-the-shelf plug-and-play commercial hardware.  We did not.  The only item that we used in this manner was our GPS receiver.

On the other hand, we were unable to qualify for entry into the final round of the competition.  To qualify required several capabilities, some of which our vehicle was unable to demonstrate; no other first-year team was able to qualify either.  Most of the teams present have been entering the competition for at least several years.

It is also worth noting that the list of schools present at the competition included quite a few well-regarded engineering schools.  So the competition was stiff and the challenge was difficult.  While we were disappointed at not being able to qualify for the final competition, I think it is fair to say that we designed a quality vehicle and were able to demonstrate capability commensurate with other first-year teams.

You can also find some good information at http://hackaday.com/2010/06/05/intelligent-ground-vehicle-competition-2010-day-one-report/, which is an article, of a sort, put together by an independent "reporter" Gerrit Coetzee.  He picked out our robot from all the others at the IGVC for his report.

Original story

A group of York College engineering and computer science seniors will travel to Michigan on June 4 to compete with their unmanned, self-guided electric vehicle in the Intelligent Ground Vehicle Challenge (www.igvc.org). The team has been designing, building and testing the vehicle for the past year as their capstone design project.

This is the first time that the College has sent a team to the competition, according to one of the team’s advisors, Jim Kearns, associate professor and coordinator of the Electrical and Computer Engineering program. “The first class of electrical and computer engineering students are seniors this year, and we (the students and faculty) searched for a new and appropriate competition-based project to pursue,” he said. “We wanted to find something that would appeal to computer, electrical, and mechanical engineering students as well as computer science students. The IGVC fit that bill.”

According to its website, the IGVC “offers a design experience that is at the very cutting edge of engineering education. It is multidisciplinary, theory-based, hands on, team implemented, outcome assessed, and based on product realization. It encompasses the very latest technologies impacting industrial development and taps subjects of high interest to students.”

Team members are mechanical engineering majors Anwar Ross from Hempstead, N.Y., Josh Stuart from Harpswell, Maine, and Ben Seidel from Walkersville, Md.; computer engineering majors Chris Matthews from Pottstown, and Jennifer Britnell from Manchester, Conn.; electrical engineering majors Matt Adams from Red Lion, Van Hare from Hanover, and Anh Nguyen from York; and computer science majors Jeremy Deschenes from Duncannon, Jessica Matthews from Bowie, Md., and Steve Kirkpatrick from Glenville.

Sponsoring the project are Stanley Black & Decker Inc., JLS Automation, American Hydro Corp., Pall Corp., Adhesives Research Inc., Kinsley Construction Co., Tyco Electronics Corp., Qualastat Electronics Inc., Sunstone Circuits, and Hemisphere GPS Inc.