Lawrence Tech Holds Thanksgiving RoboParade
Lawrence Technological University planned for the first ever Robot Thanksgiving Parade in the United States. LTU 2006 summer camp students tested the robot parade idea and prepared robots for a Thanksgiving parade. The parade featured constructed and programmed by middle school and high school students.
The historic LTU Thanksgiving RoboParade was held on Saturday, November 18th, 2006. Attendees of the parade were able to see the students in action programming their robots to participate in the parade. Students designed robot floats that are fully autonomous, follow the parade route, and detect other robots in front of them. The robot floats were fully programmed to stop and start without human help.
Watch the Robofest web site, www.robofest.net for additional details on the parade including the parade location.
H2Bot Demo Report
By CJ Chung
During the public demo on Sep. 29 at 12:30pm, H2Bot successfully completed the mission: visiting all 4 waypoints and coming back to home while avoiding obstacles; then face toward north exactly and stop. Used sensors for today’s mission are D-GPS, camcorder, and digital compass. (No laser scanner! We just got our own SICK LMS just yesterday!!!!)
For this demo, our computer science software expert Marcus Randolph and Brace Stout worked very hard. Jacob Bushon volunteered to help with the team for the fuel cell system.
Dr. Bindschadler, Dr. Azar, and Dr. Csaszar came to encourage our students. Many students who might be interested in joining IGVC team came to watch the demo. IGVC 07 team member Jeremy Gray who recently joined assisted the demo, and already he has many plans. His senior project advisor is Dr. Anneberg. 2006 team leader David Bruder stopped by with his son to encourage new members and IGVC 2007 team.
LTU News Bureau Manager Eric Pope worked very hard to bring news media: Southfield cable TV, and Southfield Newspaper.
The IGVC 07 software team is now preparing another demo at Hilton Hotel Troy on Oct. 26 hosted by Troy Chamber of Commerce. New ME and EE students will design a new robot for IGVC 2007. We plan to enter two robots next year: H2Bot and a brand new robot - it will be slimmer, may be two parts similar to Virgina Tech’s bot, also, possibly adding solar panels.
IGVC just released the official results of IGVC 2006 competition. LTU’s overall ranking is 6.