Robotics team wins Best Electronics

The ECU ATMAE Robotics team attended the Association of Technology, Management, and Applied Engineering’s annual conference in Kansas City, Missouri, and brought home a first place award in the Electrical Category.

The team worked hard to overcome several interruptions in school and in parts delivery that hampered the final assembly of the Black Pearl. Team members met late into the night and on weekends to complete the robot during the fall semester, and the machine and the team was transported on time to the competition in Kansas City. The Black Pearl was designed to locate a target inside a maze autonomously, and then the operators would cut a wire using telepresence. Then in a second act, the robot participated in a round of robot tag, where all the robots sought to “capture the flag” from their rivals. The Black Pearl had to fight off stiff competition from nine other university teams including Iowa State University, Ohio Northern University, the University of Northern Iowa and Millersville University.

The work was a collaborative effort from students in three different departments (pictured below): Ricky Biggs (senior – Team Captain), Sean Wear (junior), and Spencer Lee (junior) hail from the Department of Technology Systems; Joe Williams (senior) is from the Department of Computer Science; and Mason Caroon (freshman) is from the Department of Engineering.

The team demonstrated how all these groups can work together to achieve a goal. Except for the seniors, all of the members are excited to begin work on next year’s challenge.

Amy Frank, ATMAE chapter faculty advisor, and Bill McClung, faculty robot team mentor, assisted throughout the project, and other members of the faculty and staff helped in the labs and made it possible for the team to complete this project. Department chair Dr. Tijjani Mohammed cajoled and prodded the students to make sure the work was finished.