The IEEE Spring 2009 Robotics Competition in Lubbock, TX was held last month. My daughter's team did very well.
As you will see in the attached video, colored blocks were placed in each corner of a field and had to be picked up and then placed in the proper colored box in the center of the course. The boxes had to be picked up from each corner in a sequence that was randomly selected just before the run. In addition to the corner sequence, the color placement changed from run to run. The corners were identified by the lights suspended above the corner. Each corner light rapidly pulsed at different frequency, to fast to be visible to the human eye.
My daughter's team was the only one that had a robot that broke into four units, communicating with each other to coordinate their actions. Using this technique, they were able to best everyone else's time by a considerable margin.
They were the team to beat.
She graduates tomorrow (5/15/09) at the top of her class as an EE major with a computer hardware concentration. She has a position in graduate school to continue her study of robotics next year. At present she will be working for an engineering firm in Florida.
I'm really proud of her!
