The small robots in Ran Dai’s basement lab at Iowa State University look like fancy electronic toys. But they’re really very smart. And they’re getting smarter. Dai, an Iowa State assistant professor and Black and Veatch Faculty Fellow in aerospace engineering, is developing power-management technologies that would allow land- and air-based robots to monitor solar conditions so they can maximize operating efficiency and battery life.
Ran Dai earns NSF CAREER award to design unmanned vehicles for long-duration, high-efficiency missions Using renewable energy to power aerial and ground vehicles could change the way we handle aspects of environmental monitoring, search and rescue missions, surveillance, and agricultural practices. To navigate these sorts of dynamic environments, Ran Dai, an assistant professor in aerospace …Continue reading “Developing the next generation of solar-powered robotic systems”
In December, a group of Iowa State graduate and undergraduate students gathered at the Applied Science Complex to demonstrate their passion for making robots smarter and more autonomous. The event was the first “Rise of Machines” robotics competition, organized by Professor Sourabh Bhattacharya, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering who has been developing a cutting edge research program …Continue reading “Rise of Machines competition: Engaging students in robotics”
There they were, at 10,000 feet on the remote and rugged slopes of the Mauna Kea volcano on the big island of Hawaii, running their robot through the same volcanic soil NASA uses to test space rovers. “This was otherworldly,” said Jim Heise, the faculty advisor for Cyclone Space Mining. Six teams of students from …Continue reading “Cyclone Space Mining competes in Hawaii; once again demonstrates it has built a strong robotic miner”
Teams of Iowa State University staff, students and alumni from across the state have joined forces to coordinate FIRST® LEGO® League Iowa. FIRST LEGO League (FLL) is an international program, created by FIRST and LEGO, designed to get children interested in and excited about science, technology and engineering. Every year, FIRST releases a new challenge that …Continue reading “FIRST LEGO League Iowa forges teamwork and leadership at Iowa State, local area communities”
Guest post by Katie Goebel, project director for Iowa State’s Team LunaCY It’s always worth the drive. Twenty some hours in one of two vans full of goofy college kids and an even goofier advisor on a trip to Florida already sounds like the beginning to an interesting story. The story gets even better when one …Continue reading “Guest post: Team LunaCY’s recipe for success: Dedication and fun”
The student-engineers of Team LunaCY say they’ve built an even better robot. That’s a big deal, considering last year’s robot won three of the contests in NASA’s annual Lunabotics Mining Competition at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (The wins were in mining, outreach and efficient use of communications power.) Team members were recently in their campus lab assembling, …Continue reading “Iowa State’s Team LunaCY ready to repeat last year’s top results at NASA competition”
Learning to build and program an autonomous robot in one day may sound like a big challenge for 8-14 year olds, but the kids at Robotics Camp on June 16 didn’t seem to have any troubles with it. Heather Fremont, a senior in history, says the camp is “a day filled with hands-on activities that …Continue reading “Young students explore robotics at engineering camp”
Chad Bouton recently received Battelle’s inventor of the year award. Bouton graduated from Iowa State University with a BS in Electrical Engineering in 1993 and his MS in Aerospace Engineering in 1996. Read all about it in this link to his recent article, Bouton is Battelle’s Inventor of the Year.
After making it to the quarterfinals in last year’s RoboGames with their very first competition robot, the Iowa State Robotics Club’s BattleBots team worked even harder this year to improve the performance of their robots at the 2011 RoboGames’ Combat Robot competition in San Francisco, Calif., April 15-17. This year, the BattleBots team is taking …Continue reading “Engineering students to compete at BattleBots competition this weekend”
(Update: Watch video of the competition.) It doesn’t stack cubes of trash or watch old movie musicals. And it’s never going to develop a crush on some sleek and sexy EVE. But WALL-E’s real-world cousin may one day mine minerals on the moon’s surface—a critical function in establishing the first permanent lunar colonies. Meet the Astro Robotic …Continue reading “Moon Shot: Student Team Takes Robot to NASA Lunar Mining Competition”
