Interdisciplinary Team of Engineering Students Takes Third at IEEE Robotics Competition

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Students receiving their third-place certificate along with alumnus Matt Francis.

A team of U of A students placed third in the recent Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Region Five robotics competition. The competition challenged competitors to create an autonomous drone and robot to navigate a course of cardboard boxes labeled with a QR code. 

Computer engineering students Nicholas Brown and Stephanie Stock were just a few of the participating team members. Brown and Stock worked on the software and programming for the drone's sensors, computer and object detection, while other team members built the physical robot and hardware. 

Brown said they built the ground robot (the frame, the platform and connected the motors and wheels) and programmed the drone.  These worked together using a computer on the ground robot that enabled the two to communicate.  

"Our robots were different from others because of the onboard computer, motors, the sensors we used, as well as our software implementation," he said. 

Stock emphasized the interdisciplinary nature of the project, saying it was a valuable experience working with people from different backgrounds and problem-solving together. 

"It was very different from anything we've ever done," Brown said. "Obviously, all the projects we worked on as groups during our college career have been with other computer engineering and computer scientists. It was pretty easy to explain the concepts and what we were working on. I'm working with electrical engineers and mechanical engineers, trying to explain to them how code really works in our minds and what the goal of the code was. That was probably one of the more challenging and learning things done for this project." 

The team placed third out of 14 teams in the competition, which Brown described as a difficult challenge.  

"This project was a struggle for us," he said. "It was a lot of new things we learned how to do." 

Stock added that the experience was invaluable. "I think we're really grateful to have the experience of actually being able to go and see our project work, being able to work with different teams and not being the only team to work on it," she said. "Being able to have that experience with an interdisciplinary team and be able to see other people's strengths as well was really cool." 

In addition to Brown and Stock, the full team included computer science and computer engineering students Callum Bruton, Jase Cornett, Austin Flynn, Josh Hollis and Katarina Humbert; electrical engineering student Andrew Shields; and mechanical engineering student Ben Burdess.  

Electrical Engineering Assistant Department Head Robert Saunders is the team's mentor.