october 2009 issue
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Student Column
Newcomers Get the U of A Geers
Editor’s Note: Jocelyn Westwood returns as a PEGG columnist this year, bringing engineering student news from the University of Alberta. She has some help this year, though, in the form of Stephanie Daoust.
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Jocelyn is in her fourth year at the U of A, where she’s studying engineering physics. She’s current president of the Engineering Physics Club and holds several coordinator positions with the Engineering Students’ Society. Jocelyn also finds time for athletics — she’s on the Pandas Track and Field team, competing in sprints and hurdles. |
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With classes at the University of Alberta starting very early this fall, the Engineering Students’ Society had to put in a lot of work over the summer to prepare to welcome students back to campus. This included organizing GEER 101.
GEER 101 is the ESS’s annual week of events designed to make first-year engineering students feel at home on the U of A campus and within the Faculty of Engineering.
Several of the GEER 101 events were reinvented this September with the goal of increasing participation from first-years and better introducing them to the engineering culture. The first event in years past, for example, had typically been a pancake breakfast. This year, however, the pancake breakfast was replaced by free coffee and doughnuts for first-year engineering students.
This event was very successful, with 400 doughnuts being distributed to new engineering students within a span of about three and a half hours.
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BEEN AROUND |
The second event of GEER 101 was the design competition. This traditional event encourages first-years to get into a problem-solving mindset.
A scavenger hunt was the third GEER 101 event of the week. A new event, the hunt was designed to test new students’ knowledge of locations on campus. Important locales such as the dean’s office, engineering student club offices, and, of course, food vendors were included on the scavenger hunt to teach students about their new faculty and campus.
GEER 101 wrapped up on a Friday afternoon with a barbecue, providing free burgers to first-years — yes, our newcomers got their share of free food.
Group of the Month
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ROBOT NOT-CHICKENS |
Engineering at the U of A has a broad range of student groups for anyone to join. This month we have decided to feature ARVP, or the Autonomous Robotic Vehicle Project. The group has been designing, building and testing robotic vehicle systems for the past 14 years on campus.
Brodi Roberts, an APEGGA student member, started out with the club four years ago and is this year’s team leader. ARVP usually participates in one major competition a year. This year the members participated in Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Challenge, held in San Diego. It was the team’s second year competing at this event. In the past, our robotics fanatics participated in the Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition.
No matter whether the competition occurs on land or underwater, there’s a fair amount of work involved in designing the vehicles. This year ARVP has decided to overhaul itself and is focusing on the electronics systems design, as well as the design of the platform for its robot.
While at the competition in San Diego, this year, ARVP operated under the theme The Dirty Dozen for its 12th year. Bearacuda needed to be able to autonomously navigate itself through a series of obstacles, recognize and find a buoy in the water, drop markers into bins, shoot torpedoes through a target, and find beacons — all without any sort of human intervention!
Unfortunately, the team did not place as well as it had hoped. Bearacuda developed vision problems shortly before the competition, and there was not enough time to reprogram her.
The team was able to get the robot out of the gate, no small feat with it being four metres away from the start, and took the decision to try and hit the target in the water. The team came quite close with the search program members had encoded, and the crowd cheered for them.
Throughout the school year ARVP focuses on the design of its robot, and members hope to begin the design of a new robot for the 2011 year. While they are not working on their robotic design, ARVP members participate in many outreach programs, including summer tutorials for the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientists Challenge.
Members have also judged FIRST LEGO League held at NAIT and have given numerous presentations, including one for Scouts Canada.
ARVP is made up mainly of electrical, mechanical and computer engineering students. It has eight active members this year, however the club is open to anyone passionate about robotics.
If you have any questions, do not hesitate to drop the team a line at contact@arvp.org or visit www.arvp.org.