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Newsletter October 2016: Artbot
This past month, Artbot has accomplished as much as it did in an entire semester last year.
We realized that a major area to improve in was leadership and giving members interesting projects. Team members were entrusted with an integral aspect of the panther that they are 100% in charge of. All projects involve a combination of ME, COE, and EE principles. For example, one person was tasked with making the eyes of the panther. This includes CS for the camera’s software, EE for communications with the camera and motor control of eyelids, and the ME design work/fabrication for the eye assembly.
The projects are administered through Trello, a good ‘To Do’ list software. We have multiple boards, split up by the team’s needs. Additionally, we realized we cannot effectively delegate tasks to our members and contribute substantially to the project. Due to these facts, we assigned multiple people as...
Newsletter October 2016: Workshops
As Pitt’s Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) begins to grow, we are beginning to play a more active role in the Swanson School of Engineering (SSOE). Through this growth a key weakness has been identified in not only RAS, but a majority of project- based clubs throughout SSOE – new, younger, passionate students do not have the technical knowledge to provide significant contributions to advanced projects. Currently attempts are made to teach these students the knowledge necessary to contribute; however, it is extremely difficult to complete a project for a competition when so much background work needs to take place. The lack of strong fundamental knowledge in younger students and lack of time to teach these students often leads these students to slowly drop out of the organization.
In an effort to address this problem, RAS is developing a semester long series of workshops that are aimed to teach the...
Pitt RAS wins 1st Place in Micromouse at IEEE SAC 2016
Congratulations to the Micromouse Team, Quentin Torgerson, Xavier Torgerson, Aaron Miller, Alex Fox, and Ryan Matthews! They won first place at IEEE SAC 2016 this past weekend at Cleveland State University. The Micromouse finished the course in 6.84 seconds.
Micromouse will be showcased at the SSOE Design Expo on April 20th.
