March 21, 2007
Pellissippi State team participates in regional competition to build a robot
Pellissippi State Technical Community College is one of only three two-year colleges to enter a regional competition calling for participants to build a robot that plays basketball.
A total of 38 college and university teams are participating in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.’s SoutheastCon 2007 Student Hardware Competition. Any school with a student chapter of IEEE is eligible to enter, but Pellissippi State, Guilford Technical Community College and Tidewater Community College are the only two-year schools that chose to compete.
The judging is March 22-25 in Richmond, Virginia. The IEEE is a nonprofit professional organization dedicated to the advancement of technology.
“Pellissippi State’s Electrical Engineering Technology degree program offers students a great deal of hands-on training in electronics, automation and microcontroller technology,” said Ken Swayne, an EET associate professor and the program coordinator. “We also offer a Pre-engineering transfer program.”
Students and instructors from both programs participated in the project, which began in September 2006. Participants from the college’s Mechanical Engineering Technology program helped in the initial stages as well.
“The variety of help that came out of the three programs has encouraged collaboration and teamwork between students with different skill sets,” said Swayne.
Pellissippi State’s team consists of EET students Scott Britt, Chris McAbee, Tim Kadri and Darrell Wood; Pre-engineering students Jeremy Brantley and Wes Forbes; and instructors Swayne and Carl Mallette, also an EET associate professor.
The team leaves March 22 armed with its version of a robot that plays basketball—the central theme of this year’s competition. The Pellissippi State students have named their robot Robocat.
The “basketball” used is actually a ping-pong ball, and each half-court measures 4 x 6 feet. A robot scores points by shooting the ball through a goal, and the team that scores the most points wins the IEEE competition. The robot itself is allowed to be a maximum of 12 x 12 x 12 inches.
The project required an understanding of numerous engineering topics, among them, circuits, machinery and microprocessors.
“This has been a great educational experience for the students,” said Mallette. “They have learned a lot about coordinating projects and applying the things they’ve learned in the classroom.”
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E-mail: jwood@pstcc.edu
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