Watch this!
We just discovered a bunch of these moving pictures of UMR's amphibious dune buggy/baja vehicle. No telling what you're going to find on the Internets these days...
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May 31, 2007
Robo mojo
The Robotics Team has a new toy. Check it out.
Also, don't forget to vote for Bob's Best Pic (below). So far, the human power picture has a commanding lead. We'll post the winning photograph tomorrow.
After the jump: Read a report from Paul Robinette, who is one of the leaders on the robotics team. Paul starts with some stories from last year and then talks about this year's team members, including Overly Ambitious Freshman Ron, who built his own fire breathing robot.
Here's Paul:
We packed for a summer competition but Michigan summers are not quite like Rolla summers. It got cold enough at night that we had to send team members to Walmart to buy us sweatshirts. We put pizza over floodlights to warm it up for a midnight snack. In the morning, the mechanical engineers were so bored that they "pretended" to be attacked by the robot. (We have pictures of Robert lying underneath Optical Prime). We also developed a foolproof plan for the next year: hide a freshmen in the barrel and make him move around on the course to throw the competitors off!
While not much progress was made on the freshman-in-a-barrel idea, the team did jump right into building a new robot. This one, christened The Aluminator, was designed to be a simple platform with many mount points for sensors. We also continued work on Stereo Opticon, our three-wheeled omni-directional robot. We were fortunate enough to have several experienced freshmen join the team. Ron, for example, built a miniature model of Optical Prime (our first omni-directional robot) to test control algorithms. He impressed us all by designing it in one weekend and building it in the next. It was built entirely from spare parts in the shop, not a penny was spent on materials.
Mike and Cory were two other freshmen who impressed us with their technical skills. They designed and fabricated almost everything on The Aluminator and even took the fiberglass shell to Texas to finish it before competition.
James spent many late nights in the shop tuning The Aluminator's control system. He's a very patient guy, the tests all involved the robot moving a hair forward and then to the side. The furthest he ever drove it was about three feet, but now we have a system that can precisely orient the robot.
After every Wednesday meeting in March and April, Ryanne, Ryan, James and the rest of the AI group would head down to the shop and take over the whiteboard. After a few hours of drawing lines and trigonometric equations they would sit down on their laptops and start programming their evil -er- genius plans for robot navigation.
At the same time, Ben, Kyle and Paul D would tackle the electrical problems. On Stereo Opticon these were plentiful. The motor controllers were replaced twice before a workable solution was found. Each computer and microcontroller needed to be powered correctly. Data lines needed to be routed away from high EMI areas to keep interference at a minimum. Naturally, there was much cursing at the mechanical group.
Nick and Robert would take on the mechanical problems on Stereo Opticon. This involved replacing most of the drivetrain and cursing at the electrical group. While the system is still not perfect, a design is already being worked out for next year. Collaboration will be enforced with a baseball bat.
One of our overly ambitious freshmen (yeah, Ron again) brought down his fire-breathing robot to show off (in the parking lot, not the shop). He actuated a lighter and a spray can to make a 10 foot flame thrower. There was talk of putting it on the front of The Aluminator before the St. Pat's parade but, unfortunately, common sense and a fear of litigation prevailed.
This past weekend Ryanne, Ryan, Paul D and I worked in the shop to produce that wonderful video. We had to make a last minute computer swap, which involved significant modifications to the power supply. Then the rain kept us from testing outside so we rushed over to the ECE building to test in the ground floor hallway. There we discovered that Ryan's dog was more jealous than scared of the robot. He kept trying to crawl into Ryan's lap to displace the laptop.
The video is of a test just after the robot was given the ability to drive backwards to get out of a trap. It seems to be performing the "one step forward and two steps back" routine but it is actually finding the best path around obstacles. This level navigation seems obvious to human eyes, but the robot runs on a computer much like the one on your desk. Imagine giving control of a 120 lb robot to something like that! Sure, it might organize your photos but how well do you think it drives?
This weekend we will be back at it again. The Aluminator just requires more tuning of the vision and path planning system in order to make it faster and more maneuverable. Stereo Opticon requires significantly more work due to recent mechanical and electrical failures. If everything goes well then we should still have two working robots by June 8.
May 24, 2007
Pick Bob's Best Pic
School is out. A long weekend awaits for those of us with real jobs. We don't have any design competitions for a while. So it's time for our first semi-whenever photo awards. Our photographer, Bob, will win all of these awards. But you get to vote. (Bob doesn't really want the attention, but he really doesn't have any say in the matter.) Here's how this works. You can view some of best photos we've published so far on this blog by clicking on the links below. To vote, send us a comment. We'll post the image that gets the most "votes" some time next week or whenever we get around to it. We know we have dozens of readers, so we're looking for a nice response to this call for votes. Here are your choices:
OK. There you have it. Now leave us a comment (below) to let us know which one deserves the first semi-whenever Bob's Best photo award.
P.S. This photo is pretty cool too, but it's the only one on this blog (we think) that wasn't taken by Bob and we really don't know who took it.
May 21, 2007
Wanna go fast?
Forget about the Formula SAE thing for a minute -- this car looks like it could win the Indianapolis 500. The UMR team is skipping the Indy 500, though, in order to get the car ready for another Formula SAE competition in California. Even though UMR had a back-up engine last week in Michigan, they were worried about throwing another rod. For those of you (most of you, we're guessing) who know what that means, please provide some details by leaving comments. Your humble blogger can barely put gas in a car, let alone give you the mechanical details you desire and deserve. We trust that you, our loyal readers, can make this a much smarter blog by adding comments.
Elsewhere (actually here in Rolla), that Discovery Channel crew that is documenting the Human-Powered Vehicle Team's accomplishments will be in town tomorrow to shoot some more footage.
P.S. Some day, maybe the formula car will run on crude oil that UMR researchers plan to extract from algae.
P.P.S. You might also want to check this out. (It doesn't have anything to do with design teams, but it's very experiential.)
P.P.S.S. If you like the looks of UMR's car (above), you might want to think about bidding on it if they ever decide to put it on eBay. That's exactly what the Formula Car Team did with the 2002 car.
May 18, 2007
Zen and the art of formula car maintenance
More than 100 teams are competing in the SAE formula car competition near Detroit this week. The parking lot at the Ford Proving Grounds, which is as big as a small town, is full of mini-Indy cars. UMR's vehicle is said to be one of the coolest cars in the competition...
OK. Now we've got a report from Michigan. UMR's first run in the autocross part of the competition put them in or near the top 10. Then, in an attempt to post an even better qualifying time, UMR threw a rod ...
Breaking: Apparently UMR is out of tomorrow's endurance race. Which stinks, because UMR's car was designed to be very strong in the endurance race. But the team is going to fix the car better than ever in anticipation of the next SAE event June 13-16 at California Speedway in Fontana, Calif.
P.S. Bob will post pics (look to the right of the page) later today or definitely by tomorrow.
May 17, 2007
If you're not first, you're last
Did we mention that UMR's Human-Powered Vehicle Team is kind of a big deal? Yeah, we might have let it slip that they won a national championship or something. Sue us. We've got to get some mileage out of this thing. It's sort of like the time UMR won some kind of solar car race.
May 16, 2007
Quick hits
Three groups from the Engineers Without Borders student chapter at UMR are completing missions in Bolivia and Guatemala this month.
Elsewhere, UMR's formula car is ready to roll.
May 14, 2007
National champs!
UMR's Human-Powered Vehicle Team won the East Coast championship this weekend in Florida. Last month, the UMR team took first place in the West Coast competition. That, my friends, would make UMR the unified national champion in human-powered vehicle racing. More details to follow. In the meantime, check out Bob's Pics of this past weekend's action at the right of your screen. This is a new feature, and we think it will be a cool way to display multiple images of design team events that are happening at UMR and all over the country. Just click on the shot you like to see it bigger and to read the captions...
Update: Here's the official UMR news release.
May 09, 2007
Cool news
The Discovery Channel is going to do a story on UMR's Human-Powered Vehicle Team. A crew from Canada will be in Florida this weekend to chronicle UMR's attempt to win its sixth straight East Coast championship and its first-ever national championship. Meanwhile, another Canadian-based crew from the Discovery Channel will be in California this weekend to watch a UMR robot try to dig up moon dirt (it's probably fake moon dirt, but that's not the point).
These stories will run later in the summer. Watch this blog for details.
May 07, 2007
Free falling
Despite the following sequence of events, UMR's AAVG team did very well in the Aero Design East competition last weekend in Fort Worth, Texas. The official results should eventually be posted by SAE.
More photos in this sequence after the jump...
NOTE: The UMR team was able to collect the aircraft, including the broken tail, and, through the miracles of modern engineering, Prometheus will live to fly another day.
P.S. Most of the photos on this blog are contributed by Bob Phelan.
UPDATE: Turns out, Prometheus was too far gone to fix. Team members burned it and scattered the ashes. RIP Prometheus.
Time to fly
UMR's advanced areo vehicle on the runway, preparing for takeoff...
It takes a lot of guts to name your expensive remote-controlled airplane after a dude who got his liver picked apart by a bird every day. But that's exactly what the UMR AAVG team did. UMR team members entered their aircraft, Prometheus, in a competition that drew about 50 design teams from North and South America to Texas this past weekend. (We would have gone with Icarus for the name of the plane; that would have been really bold and daring.)
The UMR team excelled during design reports to a panel of judges. And, Prometheus was soaring high once the actual flying part of the competition started too. It looked like UMR might even be one of the very top teams. But, alas, Prometheus had one hard landing followed by an ill-fated flight involving the loss of its tail. The wind gods were angry in Texas and lots of the planes were falling from the sky -- one of them hit a car in the parking lot of the airfield. More photos, including shots of Prometheus' doomed flight, to follow....
Update: We just heard back from the team and the crash apparently didn't hurt them much. They finished fourth overall (unofficially) in the open class part of the competition. Not too shabby. Not too shabby at all.
P.S. We've been thinking about this Prometheus thing and, on second thought, the UMR team might have been thinking about the time Prometheus stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mortals. Also, Prometheus's liver had the ability to regenerate itself kinda like the UMR team members have the ability to fix their plane after crashes. Or something.
May 04, 2007
Aerospace engineering students like to make things fly
Wouldn't it be fun to put this baby into a dive, fly it right into your neighbor's back yard while he's out there grilling hamburgers, buzz his head...and stuff? Yeah, that would be so cool. Anyway, the AAVG team is on its way to Texas to participate in an annual aero design competition. We'll have photos of UMR's bird in flight by Monday.
P.S. UMR students are also pretty good at designing remote-control helicopters.
May 02, 2007
Oh, the humanity!
OK. This is the infamous Hog-tanic. Now, we shall never speak of this again.
P.S. The Advanced Aero Vehicle Group is getting ready to fly its ultra-cool remote-control aircraft in a competition this weekend in Texas. Watch this site to find out how much payload the UMR aircraft can carry. Also, we'll try to get the obligatory photos of crashes.
May 01, 2007
One last look at Dangerous Curves cutting swiftly through the water (and not sinking)
This is the very last post about concrete canoes, period, for a while. We promise. Unless you want to see a photo of The Hog-tanic going belly up? But that would probably be in poor taste. We want to keep the focus on all of the positive stuff that's going on with the UMR design teams and we don't really want to waste any more space on hilarious disasters from Arkansas like The Hog-tanic -- unless, of course, you really want us to. Comments anyone?
This canoe didn't sink
Concrete canoe racing features men's events, women's events and co-ed events. Here are some of the women who competed for UMR last weekend. If anyone would like to identfy them, this would be a good time to try out the comments link below.
Important information: Normal concrete used in a construction project weighs about 150 pounds per cubic foot. For these canoes, lighter aggregate mixtures of concrete are used. In order to float, the concrete must weigh less than the unit weight of water, which is 62.4 pounds per cubic foot.