Students custom-built robot beats professor at his own game
Janel Shoun |
It’s not often that college students get to beat their professors at their own game, but computer engineering majors Adam Head and Josh Cummings did just that at the end of the fall semester when their BisonBot Jr. computerized robot successfully navigated a maze to trounce Lipscomb Professor Greg Nordstrom’s Iron-Bot.
Each year, students enrolled in the microprocessors course in the computer engineering major conduct a competition to build a robot that can sense barriers and traverse a maze on its own. The robot with the fastest times at successfully running the maze wins honor and respect for its creators.
This year students Adam Head, a junior from Goodlettsville, and Josh Cummings, a junior from Italy, teamed up to design a robot that not only got out of the maze, but also beat their professor’s robot.
“I went for speed, but it turns out that navigation expertise won the day,” said Nordstrom, the professor of the class, who made his robot out of a iron decorated to look like a reindeer.
Head and Cummings built a two-wheeled robot with a stuffed Bison on it. They programmed the robot to always turn left given the opportunity. The maze, a wooden course laid out in the McFarland Hall of Science lobby, had all the exits on the outside borders. So the students’ plan to always turn left worked out well.
The students’ robot uses basically the same computer technology consumers see in the Roomba robotic vacuum, which cleans up a room by itself without smashing into walls, said the students.
The pair learned how to build and program the robot in about three months’ time, said Cummings. They even set up a video camera on the robot so spectators would get a “robot’s-eye-view” of the maze.
Despite their victory over Nordstrom at the maze, the students are still sweating their grade, as the measure is based on a 43-page report on the project as well as robot performance.
| Greg Nordstrom, Adam Head, Josh Cummings |