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Information on UMR's performance in last weekend's Formula SAE event in California is starting to trickle in. It sounds like the team didn't meet its high expectations. Here are a few reports:
UMR did not finish the endurance race due to an electrical problem. They kept blowing electrical breakers due to the heat.
Acceleration improved over Detroit.
12th in Design.
There were 80 cars registered.
There's really no excuse to use a James Taylor lyric in a headline on this blog, so we did it anyway. (Actually, "Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground" might have worked for the AAVG team.) Anyway, we're going to be out of the office for several days (acutally, not all of us -- just me). So "we" thought "we'd" leave you with some things to chew on until "we" get back.
If you enjoyed last week's video of the exploding chicken, you should check out Tom Shipley's video archive, which is home to stories about Engineers Without Borders, the Formula Car Team and the Solar Car Team.
Speaking of archives, we've already got a pretty good stash of posts to peruse:
AAVG
Baja
Concrete Canoe
Formula SAE
Human-Powered Vehicle
Robotics
Steel Bridge
And if you're still bored, you might want to go over to our other blog, Visions, and read about complex UMR research stuff. (If you go there, you can also read about eating squirrel for lunch.)
OK. Now we're officially gone to Carolina in my mind.
The UMR Robotics Team was in action this past weekend with a new robot called Aluminator. UMR was one of 21 qualifying teams at the IGVC Robotics Competition in Michigan (36 teams entered). But, despite the team's best efforts, Aluminator didn't exactly dominate.
The robots have to navigate a course using artificial intelligence. According to UMR team spokesperson Paul Robinette, UMR team members stayed up all night one night making sure Aluminator really turned left when it was supposed to turn left, making sure the GPS worked, and so on. But Robinette says this year's course was extra long (900 feet if we heard Paul right) and extra difficult. Aluminator made it 24 feet before short-circuiting (well, it didn't really short circuit, but that kind of terminology comes to mind for some reason.) Anyway, our good friends from Virginia Tech have apparently won the competition. Their robot reportedly made it to within 20 feet of the end of the course -- No robots that we know of made it all the way to the end. Paul says the official results won't be announced for a month or two.
P.S. Bob has added some more photos to the flickr feature on the right side of the page. This time, he captured images of UMR's National Championship Solar Car from 2003 making a recent appearance in the Rolla Sesquicentennial Parade. At first, we thought it was the Sasquatch Centennial Parade, and we were looking forward to seeing all of the 100-year-old bigfoots. But we were way off on that.
We'll put this YouTube fixation to rest as soon as we have some real news (or fake news, gossip, etc.) to report about UMR's student design teams and various competitions.
This, apparently, is what happens when you throw a rod. The unfortunate events above put UMR's slick car out of the Formula SAE competition in Detroit last month. But the UMR Formula Car Team has a chance to redeem itself June 13-16 at California Speedway in Fontana, Calif. Let's hope it's raining and that Ashley Judd is there in a sundress.
The winning photograph in the first semi-whenever Bob's Best Pic photo contest is "Human Power." This shot won in a landslide (two votes) over "The Hog-tanic" (zero votes) and "Down Goes Mizzou!" (zero votes). UMR's Human-Powered Vehicle Team won a national championship earlier this year. Later this year, Jerrod Bouchard (pictured above in front) will try to break the human-powered speed record. We'll have more details on that as plans unfold.