BLACKSBURG, Va., Sept. 10, 2007 - Students from the Virginia Tech College of Engineering’s Robotics & Mechanics Laboratory (RoMeLa) have traveled the U.S. and abroad this summer, winning a number of honors for robotics research and development.
Working under the guidance of RoMeLa director Dennis Hong, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering (ME), and graduate student Karl Muecke, a group of undergraduate students formed Team SPRInt (Soccer Playing Robot with Intelligence) and created the autonomous humanoid robot ‘DARwIN’ (Dynamic Anthropomorphic Robot with Intelligence).
Developed by the team to operate without human intervention, DARwIn can stand up on its own and locate and kick a tiny soccer ball toward a goal. DARwIn was the only U.S. entry invited to compete in the Humanoid Division of the international RoboCup 2007, held in July in Atlanta.
The team’s undergraduate leader, Robert Mayo, completed his bachelor’s degree at Virginia Tech in May and is currently a graduate student in ME working with Hong in RoMeLa.
The other ME undergraduates on team SPRInt were Abhijit Chakraborty, Marilyn Duncan, Andrew Lynch, Ryan Misjan, Laurence O’Neill, Bill Pannell, and Eric Steinberg. All of the students except Duncan were seniors who graduated in May. Steinberg is now working on his master’s degree in ME at Virginia Tech.
Although Team SPRInt and DARwIn won no prizes at RoboCup, they were invited by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence to the International Robot Competition and Exhibition in Vancouver, British Columbia, where they won the Technical Innovation Award.
SPRInt and DARwIn also were invited by National Instruments (NI) to present the keynote demonstration before an audience of 3,500 during NI Week in Austin, Texas, in August. While at the international virtual instrumentation conference, the Virginia Tech team won three awards, including the Most Outstanding Application of Virtual Instrumentation Award.
In addition, Hong and ME graduate students Derek Lahr, Ivette Morazzani, and Ping Ren won the Best Paper Award during the International Conference on Advanced Robotics, held in Jeju, Korea, in August.
The group’s paper, “Novel Tripedal Mobile Robot and Considerations for Gait Planning Strategies Based on Kinematics,” describes their work on a novel three-legged robot that is designed to walk with high energy efficiency and stability and can change directions while walking. The paper will be published in the Journal of Intelligent Service Robotics.
Hong and his students are developing several other types of robotic mechanisms in RoMeLa for both undergraduate competitions and graduate research. Earlier this year, Hong received a prestigious National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) Award for his work on a Whole Skin Locomotion (WSL) mechanism that works on much the same principle as the pseudopod “ or cytoplasmic ‘foot’ ” of the amoeba.