Event: Students in summer Engineering Physics course go head-to-head with their autonomous robots
Date: Thursday, August 5, 2010, 10 a.m. -12 p.m. (9:30 a.m. set up)
Location: Hennings Bldg., Rm. 200
6224 Agricultural Road, Vancouver
For a map, visit: www.maps.ubc.ca?652
Visuals: Student-designed automated robots will race as fast as possible on tape tracks, avoiding and passing other robots and potentially jumping over sections of track. Students and instructor will be available for interviews. Set-up space will be available for TV cameras. To download high-resolution photos of students and robots, visit: http://www.phas.ubc.ca/~jnakane/downloads/phys253_photos/
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Fourteen teams of UBC Engineering Physics students are set to compete at “RoboRacers,” the 10th Annual UBC Engineering Physics Robot Competition that pits students in head-to-head racing of their autonomous electric vehicles.
UBC Engineering Physics students have designed and built fast-moving vehicles that operate without remote controls. The Roboracers will speed along a winding track marked by black electric tape and perform the same actions as real racing vehicles. While changing lanes and taking shortcuts across the track, the robot cars must avoid crashing into each other, spinning out or falling off the racing surface which measures 16 feet by eight feet.
This year’s competition was inspired by UBC’s new Electric Racing Team, a team comprising students in engineering physics and other engineering disciplines to create an electric race car to compete against gasoline powered cars at local autocross races.
Over the past 10 years, more than 500 Engineering Physics students have gone through this hands-on prototyping course to build robots to compete in a variety of head-to-head competitions, from hockey-playing robots to autonomous rescue vehicles.
This crash course in prototyping gives students the chance to design all of the core electronics and mechanics of their robots, skills which carry over to designing real-world instruments and devices. Offering in-house metalwork and prototyping facilities, the UBC program rivals others across Canada and internationally, both within industry and at academic institutions such as BCIT, MIT and Stanford University.
