DECember 2009 issue
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Student Column
Robotics Takes Off
BY JOCELYN WESTWOOD
& STEPHANIE DAOUST
Student Columnists
University of Alberta, Engineering
The University of Alberta Aerial Robotics Group is a relatively new student group. Although UAARG has technically been running for five years, only for the past two years has the group attended competitions.
This, according to team leaders Jamie Yuen and Stephen Dwyer (both APEGGA Student Advantage Program members), was mainly due to an initial lack of expertise in the area of building autonomous aerial vehicles — clearly no easy task!
The main goal of UAARG is to design, build and test unmanned aerial vehicles. The vehicle is then brought to an international competition in Maryland in June. This Student Unmanned Aerial System competition is run by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.
At the competition, the vehicle must complete a number of tasks. These objectives include taking off, flying specified GPS waypoints, completing a search area flight, and correctly identifying the characteristics of targets via the use of an onboard camera.
At its second-ever competition in 2009, UAARG finished sixth overall and was the top Canadian team. The vehicle entered weighed about 10 kilograms and had a nine-foot wingspan. It could travel up to 90 km/h.
The aircraft was also loaded with control, imaging, electrical and communications systems. More impressive is the fact that it can be disassembled into small enough components to take as luggage on an airplane — that is, in fact, exactly how the UAARG plane got to Maryland.
With these various systems on board, it is clear that UAARG has to be a multidisciplinary student group. Its membership includes students from mechanical, electrical, civil and computer engineering. The group has also attracted a few graduate students and some from faculties other than engineering.
There are roughly 25 members in the group. To improve efficiency the work on the aircraft has been divided into subsystems.
Students are not, however, required to work on a subsystem that falls within their discipline of engineering. In this way, UAARG helps students gain new skills that they might not learn in the classroom.
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FLY STUDENTS |
Competition Qualifier Held
On Nov. 14, U of A ran its annual University of Alberta Engineering Competition. This event is a qualifier event for the Western Engineering Competition. The top two teams in each category at WEC will continue on to the Canadian Engineering Competition and possibly even the International Engineering Competition.
The western competition will be held in Winnipeg, Jan. 20-24. Categories are senior design, junior design, innovative design, consulting engineering, engineering communications and impromptu debate.
The junior design challenge, open to first- and second-year students, had a whopping nine teams compete. This was a significant increase from previous years.
This year’s challenge saw competitors design a system capable of transporting 250 millilitres of water across a 30-centimetre gap between two tables. Com-petitors also had to design a system to catch an egg from a two-metre drop. The egg had to remain intact. Finally, they had to design a tower built entirely from newsprint, with the goal of supporting the most weight.
U of A will be sending two teams in junior design to WEC. These are Thomas Zeigler, and APEGGA student members Robbie Song, Kevin Wong and Helen Blyznyuk; and Jin Choi, Craig Moore, Victor Tran and Tony Lan.
Senior design is open to senior students and requires that they solve an engineering problem and create a presentation explaining their design. This year, the challenge had competitors design and build a rubber band racecar. The car was judged on the distance of travel, the straightness of its path, and the amount of water weight it could carry over a certain distance.
Winners are APEGGA student members Andrew Jackson, Edmond Chen and Justin Bertagnolli, and Zach Byrne.
Two debate teams earned the right to compete at WEC: APEGGA student member Mary McPhail and Rachelle Neame; and Sarah-Jane Laxdal and Seth Jansen.
The final three competitions were run through an application process.
More Info
UAARG
uaarg@ece.ualberta.ca
www.ece.ualberta.ca/~uaarg
Western Engineering Competition
www.wec2010.ca
Canadian Engineering Competition
www.cec2010.ca