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UAH Wins SoutheastCon 2000!!!
Thirteen proved to be a lucky number for Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) students at UAH. Each year the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) sponsors a Student Hardware Competition for colleges and universities in the Southeast. This year thirteen UAH students won first place at the SoutheastCon 2000 competition held in Nashville, TN, on April 8. The UAH team won against teams from nineteen other southeast colleges and universities, winning every round and achieving the highest single score, and the highest cumulative score.
Every year, the ECE Department offers a senior design course, EE 412 - IEEE Car Project, in which students design, build, test, and compete an entry for the SoutheastCon Student Hardware Competition. Although the competition challenge is completely different each year, it always involves a small, computer-controlled robot. These autonomous vehicles must complete their assigned task within a few minutes. This year the competition challenged undergraduate students to make use of several fields within electrical engineering to design a vehicle capable of detecting cylindrical receptacles which are marked with light-emitting diodes and current-carrying coils. The vehicle must navigate to and deposit balls into the receptacles. The matches take place in an octagonal arena. Two vehicles compete against each other and the clock in the same arena to score points.
James Anderson, head of the Huntsville IEEE Section, said of the competition, "It was awesome the way the UAH car out performed the competition in the semifinal and final rounds of the competition. They walked away with first place. Congratulations to the team for a job well done."
"The students put in a lot of time and effort into their project and have done a tremendous job," according to this year's course instructor Dr. John Piccirillo. "It was an exciting competition and I was proud to be associated with these young men and to represent UAH at the event. In the last three years, UAH has achieved first and second place standings. This says a lot about the quality of the UAH engineering programs."
There are many people and organizations that contributed significantly to the success of the UAH team. ADTRAN Inc. and the Huntsville Section of the IEEE both made generous contributions for the purchase of various robotic parts and tools. The ECE Department, UAH IEEE Student Branch, and UAH Student Government all provided vital services and additional funding. Dr. Reza Adhami, Department Chair, Dr. William Cohen, IEEE car project course pioneer, Dr. Charles Corsetti, student adviser, and Mr. Dennis Hite, ECE laboratory manager, provided much useful insight, advice and assistance.
