The University of Cincinnati College of Engineering entry captured three different prizes in an international robotics competition this July in Florida.

The Bearcat3 Robot was competing against top engineering schools in the United States and from as far away as Japan in the Intelligent Ground Vehicle Contest July 6-8 at the Coronado Springs Resort in Walt Disney World.

"Sachin Modi, our team leader, has done a splendid job this year," said Ernie Hall, professor of mechanical engineering and director of the UC Center for Robotics Research.

The UC Robot Team won the First to Qualify award. They also won a trophy, certificate and check for Third Place in the Autonomous Challenge Contest. They also came in Fourth Place in the Navigation Contest. UC was one of only three American univerisites to receive performance awards during the competition.

"I believe our team worked very hard, were wonderful representatives of the University of Cincinnati and had a great experience," said Hall, adding that UC out-performed several well-known schools including the University of Florida and Virginia Tech which started out with five different robots.

The Bearcat3 Robot included a Global Positioning System to help in navigation, but was also required to follow a specific pattern. So, the test track work was essential to preparing the team for national competition. The track was set up on Campus Green with the assistance of Gary Herzog in UC's Building and Grounds.

More information is available on the contest web site.

Engineer Wins Award for Robotics Research

Helping robots think for themselves so they can avoid obstacles is one of the biggest obstacles robotics researchers face. But a UC engineer's progress in finding a solution recently earned him international recognition.

Graduate student Sachin Modi received the Best Student Presentation Award at the SPIE Intelligent Robotics and Computer Vision Conference. SPIE is the International Society for Optical Engineering.

Modi is working on his master's degree in industrial engineering and a team leader on the UC robotics team which competes each year in a national mobile robot competition.

His conference presentation, "Comparison of Three Obstacle Avoidance Methods for a Mobile Robot," earned top honors at the international conference. Modi compared fixed mounting of sonar sensors, a rotating sonar sensor, and a laser scanner system. All were used on UC's competition robot, but Modi believes the research will have important applications in industry as well.

"The significance of the research is in the increased understanding of obstacle avoidance for robot control and the applications of autonomous guided vehicle technology for industry, defense and medicine," said Modi. "The quality of this research is indicated by our performance in the International Ground Robotics Competition in 2001."

UC came in 5th place overall, and only two schools had better obstacle course runs than the UC Bearcat robot. The team's adviser is industrial engineering professor Ernie Hall. Modi says Hall deserves much of the credit for his recent honor.

"I was happy to know I had won the award. It was possible for me to win only due to the guidance and encouragement given by Dr. Hall," said Modi who came to UC from India because of the college's reputation for excellence.

"I chose UC for my master's, because it has a good industrial engineering department and the faculty are well known in the field."

Modi will receive a certificate and cash award for his presentation. He is the first UC engineer to ever receive the award.