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FAU Robots Dominate Engineering Majors from FAU take 1st & 2nd Prize at UF Competition
Boca Raton News
BY ASHLEY HARRELL
In a fierce robo battle put on by the American Nuclear Society, Florida Atlantic University's bots came out on top. The Owls sent four teams of undergrad engineering majors to rival the University of Florida teams on gator turf. The premise of the competition was to pick up three items of nuclear waste that has dropped on the floor in the so-called "hot room." The nuclear waste was represented by a tennis ball, a bag of rice and a can of tomato soup. Each team assembled a remote-control robot to scoop up the products and contain them in the least amount of time possible. In the end of the competition, it was team Owltech Luis Rodriguez, Ian Strompf, Pablo Sanchez, Mohamad Awada and Floyd Atkinson that built the bot with the best performance.
Second place went to Team Overkill — Debra Coughlin, Charles Bingham, Nicomel Rimpel, Guy Malvoisin, Hansy Ambroise and David Alkire — whose members were ecstatic about the overall performance of FAU. "We pretty much put UF to shame and embarrassed them in their own backyard. It was a good feeling because we were supposed to be the underdog but we dominated," said Charles Bingham of the second place team, Team Overkill. Administrators and professors said they couldn't be more thrilled with their mechanical, electric and computer engineers. "We are all very proud of our own students and our Engineering Program," said engineering professor Ming Huang. "The results show that FAU's Engineering program has come a long way, and that our students are just as competent and well–trained as other big name schools."
On Wednesday and Thursday the teams presented their robots, which double as their senior projects, to classmates in the Live Oak Pavilion at FAU. They gave demonstrations and describe how the robots were built to win the biggest engineering competition of FAU history. The prize money, $1,500, will most likely go toward setting up a fund for the school or to help pay off bills — the bots cost more than $2,000 to build.
Copyright 2004 - Boca Raton News
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