Chicago EDT

EDT has set up a group driven project to compete in NASA’s Annual Lunar Robotics Mining competition. In this pursuit students will create a tangible result in where they can use their work and experience from this project to aid in their professional pursuits part of their portfolio. To further contribute to the STEM field, and bring prestige and exposure to the University.

The goal of this project, aside from the competition, is for students to differentiate themselves. When members are finished they can add this project to their resume/portfolio and point to direct and applicable areas where they contributed. The project goal is to allow students to explore and implement their knowledge in their areas of interest, to give members exposure, experience and proof of their capability to create tangible results.

EDT is excited to be competing in this project features applied robotics, the competition is fun and highly competitive. It is interdisciplinary and allows a wide range of people to apply their knowledge. UIC has multiple robot teams that compete. However, none that features mining, which is unfortunate because moving material is a core engineering problem. Other competitions which EDT has participated in the past don’t have this focus where a team can score higher for outreach, social media and a worldwide campaign. This focus is important because STEM projects are often insolated, these efforts would help bring STEM into the more into the public eye.

Over the years EDT has developed reliable systems for tele-operation of their bots. After dabbling with fully autonomous at JSDC, the team craved a competition with new and more complex challenges. Inspired by the Grand Challenge, we sought out a new higher profile competition.

IGVC is an advanced autonomous robotics competition, targeted toward masters and PhD level students. At EDT we manage with an entirely undergraduate team, seeking only minor support from alumni.

The competition itself takes place outside, rain or shine. EDT travels to the University of Oakland, in Rochester Michigan, where they compete in an open field. There are three parts: Navigation, JAUS, and Engineering Design.

The Navigation part involves qualifying, which makes sure the core systems (line detection and object avoidance) are functioning. The real course involves the robot to navigate a course without going outside the white lines (which may be dashed or broken at times), avoid obstacles such as traffic obstructions(cones, bins, etc.) and other navigational difficulties such a sand trap or a dynamic course.

The design includes presenting the robot to a panel of judges who come from the field. EDT strives to be a design team, and not just an assembly or systems integration team (although system integration is important and a part of design). This competition really forces you to apply proper design philosophies in order to produce a working machine that can compete successfully.

March 13-14th, 2015

Chicago Engineering Design Team competed at the Jerry Sanders Design Competition at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign.  EDT had three teams representing UIC over the weekend: Team GLaDOS, Team Pandora, and Team Richard.  Against fierce competition, Team GLaDOS and Team Pandora were able to take home the 3rd and 4th place awards, respectively!

Over the course of a few days, and with the gracious help of our alumni, EDT was able to install the Acu-Rite 200S on our trusty old Bridgeport J-head mill. The installation included two optical encoders for the table, one for the quill, and the control unit. After everything was installed, the mill was trammed and checked for repeatability and accuracy using a dial indicator. Many thanks to the UIC College of Engineering for their continued support!

No more reading dials and counting rotations for us!

After several setbacks earlier in the week, including a failed motor on our digging mechanism and an improperly set watchdog timer, we were able to dig and deposit the simulated lunar regolith required to qualify! Check the video below for our qualifying run, and skip to the 2:38:00 mark.

Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream