Beaumont Enterprise Article on 2009 IEEE Robot Team
Robots take over the world (OK, not
really)
By SARAH MOORE
February, 20, 2009
The little robot reached up to grasp a small, red box.
Its arm lowered the box to a sensor, then stretched to place the box in the
correct compartment of its cargo space.
The box didn't correctly settle into the compartment.
The robots' designers shrugged - it's a work in progress, and the boxes aren't
weighted the way they'll be when they get to competition.
A team of seniors in the Electrical Engineering program at Lamar University
demonstrated its creation to a group of prospective students at an open house
on Saturday.
The robot, dubbed "Megawatt," looked like child's play, with its
toy-truck wheels and bright red paint - but the project represented months
of serious collaboration and work from team members.
Lamar seniors Jeremy Kaulfus, 23; Caleb Mott, 28; Ben Krueger, 24; Justin Walters,
28; Danny Scott, 22; and Jose Lopez began the project in August.
Engineering Professor Harley Myler explained that besides giving students hands-on
experience designing and building machines from scratch, the exercise helps
build a sense of teamwork.
The contest requires students to build a robot within certain specifications
for a specific purpose.
This year, the problem involves hazardous waste management.
Students must create a device that can pick up different colored waste bins
at four different sites, carry them to a central location and deposit them
in the color-coded dumping spots.
Saturday was the first time the group had put all the robot's components together
and took it for a spin.
So far, the team had spent about $800 on parts for the robot.
Myler said in the "real world" - at NASA or the Department of Defense
-a team working on a long-term project like this likely would have already
spent close to $1 million.
Robots are being developed for a variety of applications, from industrial to
educational to those built to assist physically and mentally challenged people.
According to information on the NASA's Robotics Alliance Project Web site,
developmental robotics is one of the newest branches of the field, combining
robotics with artificial intelligence, developmental psychology, developmental
neuroscience and philosophy.
Another student team at Lamar University's Electrical Engineering Department
developed the Eye Shoe, footwear designed to help the visually impaired get
around without having to depend on others for help, according to an article
in the October issue of Cardinal Cadence magazine.
Students Sead Dajdzic, Adonrum Die, Allen Onwuchekwa and Dale Van Dorn designed
and built the shoe, which detects obstacles and alerts the wearer with vibration
devices.
Other robot projects include Squirt, which can find and quickly extinguish
fires.
Squirt took first place in the Engineering Olympiad portion of the Trinity
College Firefighting Competition Home Robot Contest last spring.
The Megawatt team members said they would not necessarily go into the robotics
field, but building the device was still a useful exercise.
The project made them apply the engineering knowledge and skills they'd been
learning, think creatively and problem solve.
Kaulfus seemed most interested in the field.
"I would go into it if a job was there," he said, adding that his
dream job would be a position with NASA.
But several agreed they would likely tinker with robots as a hobby, regardless
of what kind of job they get.
Kaulfus said the era of Jetsons-type personal robot servants might not be all
that far down the road.
"It's doable in the future," he said, adding that Japanese engineers
have designed a small humanoid robot.
"It's pretty impressive - it responds to voice commands," he said.
Walters added that programming the software was one of the biggest challenges
in designing that type of robot.