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A robot created by computer science Assoc. Prof. Fred Martin’s spring semester robotics class had successfully participated in the 17th annual Intelligent Ground Vehicles Competition (IGVC) held at Oakland University in Rochester, Mich.
The robot, called MCP III.5, garnered fifth place in the Navigation Challenge, one of the two performance events at the contest, and placed in the top 10 overall. “This was with a field of more than 40 robots, so it’s a pretty good accomplishment!” says Martin. “We won a cash prize of $750 too.”
The group photo shows the 2009 UMass Lowell Robot Hawks team. It includes, from left, Prof. Martin, Tor Valeur, Katie Dufault, Jim Dalphond, Megan Reichlen, Greg Pilla, John Fertitta, Mark Sherman, Nat Tuck and Michael McGuinness.
Martin says one of the most interesting aspects of IGVC is the intensive teamwork required to be successful. “The robot has many subsystems — mechanical, electronic, sensor, motors, gearing, computational and power/battery,” he says. “Each subsystem had one or several students who had designed it or knew how it worked and how to fix it. Then there were some students who provided logistical support for the entire team. Finally, there were students who wrote the master control code that made everything work together, so the robot could actually perform the required tasks in the contest.”
According to Martin, this role was the most high-pressure, glamorous part, but it was possible for a student to work at that level only because of the contributions of all the other team members. “We had fluid and especially friendly team dynamics so we really didn’t know who would end up being responsible for the master control code until we arrived at the event and started the final work in earnest!” he says. “The control program that earned us fifth place was written by computer science grad student Nat Tuck. But, like I said, he leveraged the work of the whole team to be able to specialize and serve in this role.”
For more information about the contest, visit www.igvc.org. The class also kept a blog during the event that you can read at techcreation.cs.uml.edu/wordpress.
