UDM's College of Engineering and Science team places third (of 37) at International Engineering Competition

Ten University of Detroit Mercy electrical engineering students, three faculty members and a robot overcame the obstacles last weekend, placing third place overall at the 15th Annual Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC) in Rochester, MI. The competition included design and navigation competitions and an autonomous challenge.

Thirty-seven teams from 30 universities representing the U.S., Canada, India and Japan competed at this year's IGVC, held on June 8-11 on Oakland University's campus. UDM's College of Engineering and Science team, the "CAPACITOPS" placed third overall in the competition behind Omnix 2007, a team from Hosei University in Japan.

"We are extremely proud of this year's team," explained Leo E. Hanifin, dean of the College of Engineering and Science. "This is the second year in a row UDM's team has placed in the top three. They are exceptional students who worked extremely hard on each competition."

The IGVC is an annual international competition created to offer cutting-edge design experience to engineering students. The competition consisted of three challenges. The autonomous challenge requires teams to create a fully autonomous, unmanned ground robot that can navigate an outdoor obstacle course within a specific amount of time, while staying within a given speed limit.

The navigation challenge tests each team vehicles' ability to autonomously travel from one starting point to a number of target destinations through obstacles and return to home base, given only the GPS coordinates of those targets.

"We have been attending this competition for a number of years," said Mark Paulik, professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UDM." "We have built a new curriculum in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department around a robotics theme and our students performed well today."

Faculty Advisors:

• Dr. Mohan Krishnan, ECE Dept.
• Dr. Mark Paulik, ECE Dept.
• Dr. Nassif Rayess, ME Dept.

"CAPACITOPS" Team (made up of Electrical Engineering majors):

• Kevin Barry, Undergraduate
• Fen-Yuan Chen, Graduate
• Yung Huang Cheng, Graduate
• Lee Desheng, Graduate
• James Gawecki, Undergraduate
• Phillip Gilreath, Undergraduate
• Cheng-Lung Lee, Graduate
• Mimi Nguyen, Undergraduate
• Phuong Nguyen, Undergraduate
• Otis Robinson, Undergraduate

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The University of Detroit Mercy is Michigan's largest private Catholic University, offering approximately 100 majors and programs in 60 academic fields. Sponsored by the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) and the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, the University has three campuses located in downtown and northwest Detroit.

For the 11th consecutive year, UDM was ranked among the top tier of Midwestern master's universities in U.S.News & World Report's "America's Best Colleges" – 2012 edition.

Publish date: June 25, 2007