Seeking project members and leaders

Join one of IEEE UCSD’s projects to apply knowledge learned inside the classroom, learn new technical skills, and build a robot that will compete in a nationally recognized competition. Earn course credit in ECE 199 or ECE 193H. To join a project, contact the project lead. All class levels and all majors are welcome. See projects for pictures, posters, and more information on each project.

Micromouse

Micromouse is an event where small robot mice solve a 16x16 maze. The mice are completely autonomous robots that must find their way from a predetermined starting position to the central area of the maze unaided. The mouse will need to keep track of where it is, discover walls as it explores, map out the maze and detect when it has reached the goal. Once the optimal route has been found, the mouse will run that route in the shortest possible time. Mice can run at up to three meters per second, with current world records around 6~7 seconds.

• We are seeking students of all class levels to form 3 software teams of 2-4 people each. Each team will receive a robot and be responsible for programming the robot in time for competition in April, 2010.
• We are seeking students of all class levels to form a hardware team of 3-5 people, which will receive a budget of up to $2000 to build and program a new robot in time for competition in April, 2010. We are seeking an exceptionally driven individual with strong track record to lead this team.

Contact: Alex Forencich, Micromouse Project Lead, jforenci@ucsd.edu

AUVSI

The Student Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Competition challenges students to design, build, and operate an autonomous unmanned aerial system. The complete mission objectives are for an unmanned, radio controllable aircraft to be launched and transition or continue to autonomous flight, navigate a specified course, and use onboard payload sensors to locate and assess a series of manmade objects in a search area prior to returning to the launch point for landing. This project requires circuit design, controls, DSP, embedded computing, machine learning, and image processing.

• We are seeking students of all class levels from ECE, CSE, ME, AE to do hardware design & fabrication, software, simulation & modeling, mechanical design & fabrication, and airframe design and fabrication. Competition is in June, 2010.

Contact: Daniel Bedenko, AUVSI Project Lead, d.bedenko@gmail.com

Natcar

Southern California Natcar is an undergraduate design competition sponsored by ViaSat and hosted by UC San Diego. Teams of undergraduate students design, build, and race an autonomous car which must follow a track marked by black tape on blonde hardwood flooring. Under the tape, there is a wire carrying a 100mA rms 75kHz sinusoidal signal. The fastest cars travel at speeds up to 10m/s. See SoCal Natcar.

IEEE UCSD is funding 3 Natcar teams at $500 each. Team 1 is already formed, team 2 has a project lead, and team 3 is vacant. We are seeking

• 1-2 students to complete team 2
• an exceptionally driven individual with strong track record to lead team 3. The team 3 project lead will be responsible for completing his team and building a car in time for competition in May, 2010.

Contact: Jordan Rhee, SoCal Natcar Chair, jerhee@ucsd.edu

RoboMagellan

RoboMagellan is a robotics competition emphasizing autonomous navigation and obstacle avoidance over varied, outdoor terrain. At the start of the competition, a set of GPS waypoints are programmed into the robot, and it must find its way from start to finish without human intervention. Because of the irregularity of the terrain, the robot must use a combination of its sensory capabilities including GPS, machine vision, optical sensors, and ultrasound sensors to navigate around the obstacles. The number and complexity of the subsystems makes power and integration two of the largest challenges. The variety of sensor data being fed into the robot requires the use of sophisticated control techniques including fuzzy logic and artificial intelligence.

• We are seeking students of all class levels from ECE, CSE, ME to design, build, and program a robot in time for the competition in June 2010.

Contact: Omeed Mirbod, RoboMagellan Project Lead, omirbod@gmail.com