About The IEEE Robot Team

The University of Wisconsin-Madison IEEE Robotics Team is a student run organization which competes in the annual Intelligent Ground Vehicle competition (IGVC) in Michigan and participates in outreach events with industry, hobbyists, and younger students. We are a multi-disciplined group of mechanical engineers, electrical and computer engineers, and computer scientists. Our mission is to give students hands-on experience working as a team to produce an autonomous robot from conception to production. Our members, mostly undergraduates, are passionate about their work and dedicate large amounts of their free time on a weekly basis to the team. We are friends, classmates, and colleagues.

Competitions

The main goal motivating the IEEE Robotics team is the Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC) each June in Rochester, Michigan. Continuously increasing in difficulty, the challenge demands that students continue to improve on previous member's experience and continue to develop new technologies and components. This competition has real-world constraints such as funding and fixed deadlines, is outcome assessed, and provides an opportunity to excel at a very difficult task.

IGVC consists of four main challenges:

The Autonomous challenge requires that our robot navigate through an obstacle course without human intervention. Obtsacles such as barrels, cones, ramps, potholes, and sand pits populate the grass course. The robot must navigate between two white lines painted on the course and avoid all obstacles in its path. As the robot progresses through the course, navigation becomes more difficult with switchbacks, figure 8's, discontinuous lines and other challenges. Hitting an obstacle or driving over the painted line boundaries ends the run. The outcome of this challenge is based on the total distance traveled and the time taken to travel that distance.
The Navigation challenge requires navigate to a predetermined list of GPS waypoints in the shortest time possible. This task is complicated by the fences, barrels, and other random obstacles that obstruct the most efficient path. The robot must be able to adapt to changes in its environment that prevent it from reaching its goal. Success in this challenge is based on the number of waypoints reached and the fastest time to do so.
JAUS, or the Joint Architecture for Unmanned Systems, is a component based, message-passing architecture that specifies data formats and methods of communication among computing nodes. It defines messages and component behaviors that are independent of technology, computer hardware, operator use, and vehicle platforms and isolated from mission. The idea behind JAUS is to create a platform independent robotics interface that allows any system that implements the JAUS protocol to interact with and control virtually any JAUS robot. Success in this challenge is based on meeting several increasingly difficult levels of compliance with the JAUS protocol.
The design competition is an evaluation of each team's conceptual design for their robot based on a written report and oral presentation with demonstration. Robots are evaluated based on their design strategy and process, innovations, and overall implementation quality.

Engineering Expo:
The Team also competes in the UW-Madison Engineering Expo, a biannual event hosted by the College of Engineering. It is one of the largest events on campus. Part of this event is a robotics competition in which anyone in the community can compete. In previous years, this robotics competition involved collecting and sorting different colored tennis balls and scoring them in raised goals. The robots are typically tele-operated, meaning the human driver controls the robot using video feedback.

History

The team began in 2002 as a group of electrical and computer engineers within the UW-Madison student chapter of IEEE. These students worked on robotics projects and participated in various competitions including the Jerry Sanders Design Competition and Engineering Expo. After the team began competing in the Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition in 2004, the team split from the larger IEEE organization and become the IEEE Robotics Team. Each summer a new entry is submitted to IGVC, developed by a new team of budding roboticists. See the projects page for a history of robots entered into various competitions.

Outreach

The IEEE Robotics team is involved in getting K-12 students interested in robotics and engineering. We have put on demonstrations of our robot and talks for various groups, including the PEOPLE program and a local Lego League team. We also mentor a local high school FIRST robotics team, advising them on their design and strategy in their own competition. Additionally we share our project with the greater local community when the opportunity arises. We set up a booth at the UW-Madison Engineering Expo biannually to share our project with the Madison public, and we have presented at Milwaukee community events as well.

Hands-on Experience

Our organization attempts to give students hands on experience that is not offered in classes and have fun working on challenging team projects. Team members work in small groups to design and prototype various subsystems of the robot. This allows individual team members control over the entire design process of research, conception, implementation, and testing. The subsystems are rigorously tested and improved upon until they meet and exceed our design constraints. The individual subsystems are then integrated into the cohesive robot design. We work under real-world financial and time constraints and must combat these difficulties with dedication and perseverance. Few things are more satisfying than watching the results of your hard work come to life and finally work.

Sponsorship

As the level of difficulty in the IGVC challenge requires that we stay on the cutting edge of technology, software, and research. The IEEE Robotics team depends on critical contributions from industry sponsors to provide:

Sophisticated equipment like laser range finders, cameras, LCD panels, and motors.
Embedded and electrical components like AVR's, wires, and military spec connectors.
Materials like aluminum, hinges, weather stripping, plexiglass and services like injection molding and laser cutting.
Financial donations to help pay for transportation and the costs of materials