Alexander Rice of Virginia Military Institute, VMI Center for Undergraduate Research, IEEE VMI Student Branch

We have been given a unique challenge for the 2022 IEEE SoutheastCon Hardware Competition focusing on the celebration of Mardi Gras. The Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) senior capstone project, which was sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the VMI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, tasked a team of 15 ECE seniors and one CIS senior with creating an autonomous robot that must navigate a course, collect beads, and deposit them in specified locations under time pressure. Course navigation is accomplished using computer vision to direct the robot’s movement. Computer vision also assists in the collection of beads, correctly aligning the robot, and launching them into their nets for points. The engineering process included steps such as: the problem identification, a research survey, the development of engineering and marketing requirements, the generation and analysis of alternatives, a prototyping stage, subsystem and system testing and a debugging/refinement stage. Design techniques such as signal conditioning, error tolerance, embedded control and sensing systems were used to develop the prototyped capstone system. The finalized version of the robot will compete in the 2022 IEEE SoutheastCon Student Hardware Design Competition during VMI Field Training exercise in Mobile, Alabama.

Biography:

Alexander Rice is the project manager for the IEEE 2022 SoutheastCON Hardware project and Chair of the IEEE VMI Student Branch

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