Seungmoon Song and RoMeLa’s DARwIn humanoid robot. (Photo by Christina O’Connor)
A graduate student in the electrical and computer engineering (ECE) department has been awarded a $10,000 Ford engineering scholarship from the Golden Key international honor society. The international organization awards only four such scholarships annually.
Seungmoon Song’s graduate school research focuses on humanoid robotics locomotion and in maximizing the power production of solar cells. His core faculty advisers are Dan Stilwell, an ECE associate professor, and Dennis Hong, an associate professor of mechanical engineering and director of Virginia Tech’s Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa) .
Song is a member of RoMeLa’s Team DARwIn , which actively participates in RoboCup, an international autonomous robotic soccer competition that seeks to develop robots capable of competitively playing against humans by 2050. Song in 2009 helped program the motion control system for DARwIn, and is now working on enhancing the robot’s omni-directional locomotion engine. Song also is working on project CHARLI, a full-sized humanoid robot, first of its kind in the United States, as well as a project involving solar power cells.
Song is a native of Busan, South Korea, and graduated in 2008 with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.
Established in 1977, the Golden Key honor society has more than 2 million student and alumni members in more than 370 campus-based chapters in Australia, Canada, India, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States. Golden Key recognizes and encourages scholastic achievement and excellence among college and university students in all disciplines, as well as providing campus and community service opportunities.
The College of Engineering at Virginia Tech is internationally recognized for its excellence in 14 engineering disciplines and computer science. The college’s 6,000 undergraduates benefit from an innovative curriculum that provides a “hands-on, minds-on” approach to engineering education, complementing classroom instruction with two unique design-and-build facilities and a strong Cooperative Education Program. With more than 50 research centers and numerous laboratories, the college offers its 2,000 graduate students opportunities in advanced fields of study such as biomedical engineering, state-of-the-art microelectronics, and nanotechnology. Virginia Tech, the most comprehensive university in Virginia, is dedicated to quality, innovation, and results to the commonwealth, the nation, and the world.