Day three near Detroit sees only about one third of the teams have qualified for tomorrow’s race, and one of those teams is from S&T (of course)! Out of about 40 teams the upstart IDE team's triMAXion joined Princeton U as one of only six teams in the design finals, and will get a chance to move even higher in the rankings when they repeat their presentation to a tougher set of judges.
They spent all their efforts (and miniscule budget) on using an existing commercial mobility platform (electric wheelchair) to which they mounted a high performance (Mac) processor, devised a simple but elegant (Mac) modular control system, and mounted a single stylish (Mac) iSight camera that costs about 1/10th the price of most other visual systems in use at the event. They clearly designed to the objective with a simple, effective and reliable machine, and to save cost they even made the upper section out of scrap lumber, but it looks pretty sharp anyway. Smart, too (Mac). **No disclaimer needed to figure out what platform THIS is written on.**
"Aluminator" has run into a few problems, most of which seem to be caused by bad cables.
The Miners have repaired the short circuits but are now worried that the cables may have damaged the motor controllers. They are reprogramming the path planning to run without wheel sensor feedback, which should make the craft a bit clumsy, and they'll have just two time windows in which to qualify or else just become observers.
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