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The University of Cincinnati Robotics Team robot, dubbed the Bearcat Cub, looks more like a pile of lab equipment than the science fiction characters typically associated with the machines. A skeleton of steel rods forms a roughly 3-by-3-by-2.5-foot cube with multi-hued wires carrying information to various pieces of hardware as rubbery veins.
After three years of research and construction, the team has created this autonomous robot, capable of maneuvering through unstructured environments with the help of satellites in the sky, said club president and senior computer science student Justin Gaylor.
Wheels from the Segway Human Transporter - a weight-sensitive mobile podium used to help UPS employees and big city businesspeople get around - governed by two motors allow the machine to roll about. A small gas powered engine runs the machine, although power can also be drawn from a battery.
The team has also stocked the robot with digital video cameras, a laser scanner and stereovision for obstacle detection, and an image processor passing through two cameras attached to the Cub's front side to detect obstacles in its path. A laptop sitting on the heap of machinery processes all the information as the brain controlling the body, he said.
So, there's more to this laptop-on-wheels than meets the eye.
Fifteen to 20 students of various majors - including computer science and bio-medical, mechanical, computer and industrial engineering - have contributed to the effort in recent years with the intent to compete against other universities at competitions like the upcoming Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Challenge, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense and held in September.
"The Army is interested in unmanned vehicles," Gaylor said, "to go into missions and get information, or maybe to run tanks without anyone in them. About 200 teams applied for the DARPA Challenge and 119 were selected," he said.
Feeling the pressure of the approaching competition, the UC Robotics Team has been practicing out on Sigma Sigma Commons for the past few days, tightening its robot's skills.
At times the students let it run autonomously and other times they control it with a wireless joystick. The Bearcat Cub glides about sounding a lot like a whirring bumblebee.
Wednesday, judges from the DARPA Challenge visited the school to watch the Cub in action and determine whether the team will advance into the next round of the competition. While the results won't be available until June, the team is confident that the Cub performed well. "I think it went great, I think the DARPA people were very pleased," Ray Wilson, a first- year mechanical engineering graduate student with the team said. "It made all those late nights worth it."
Regardless of the outcome, the team will continue to develop the robot. "We're going to plan as if we're accepted (to the next round)," Wilson said.
The team designed all of the device's software this year using C# (that's C-Sharp), a Microsoft programming language similar to Java. A series of text and code eventually gave the Cub the ability to navigate and avoid obstacles on its own, Gaylor said.
Sponsors like the Graduate Student Grant Association and the Undergraduate Funding Board fund some of the group's expensive purchases, robotics professor and faculty advisor Ernie Hall said. "And after we talk to them, we hit up everyone we know - the colleges, the university, General Electric, Proctor and Gamble and individual faculty members," he said.
Many of the students become involved with the team as part of their senior projects while others simply enjoy the work.
"I built robots in high school," said Mei Long, a senior in computer engineering. "When I came to UC, I didn't know about this team - it was a really great discovery. It's a great team and it's fun. We're trying to recruit students to take over and improve what we've done," she said.
Hall said the student-to-student progression lies at the heart of the team.
"Each year students work on a thesis and senior design project. This is one of the best teams I've ever seen," he said, praising the group's motivation and work ethic.
Gaylor said he enjoys the work.
"I have a lot of interest in artificial intelligence," he said. "If you have a new idea, you can try it out on a robot. A lot of undergrad work is theoretical, but to have an application where you can implement your ideas is so cool. And when you're passionate about something and you think it's fun, you find the time to work on it."
Beyond aiding research of the Department of Defense, many team members see robots as integral to the entire planet's future.
"Robots are extremely helpful to people," Long said. "They're good for the safety of people. If you have mine-work, for example, it's better to send robots in than to send people. Or, you can save human resource by using robot aides instead of 20 people on an assembly line. This pressures us to be more educated and offer jobs to people in design and engineering rather than menial labor."
Hall said the evolution of robotics at UC has livened since one of his first projects with students building a robot lawn mower. "This project is the kind of thing that if you work with the right team, you can accomplish it," he said.
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