{"id":4186,"date":"2011-06-17T16:55:32","date_gmt":"2011-06-17T20:55:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/?p=4186"},"modified":"2014-06-02T14:54:56","modified_gmt":"2014-06-02T18:54:56","slug":"mobile-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/2011\/06\/17\/mobile-service\/","title":{"rendered":"Mobile Service"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"float: right; margin: 5px 0 2px 10px;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MC79chWQNbA?showinfo=0\" height=\"200\" width=\"300\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Electrical engineering professors Fernando Rios-Gutierrez and Rocio Alba-Flores are well aware of what the human brain can accomplish.<\/p>\n<p>Simple tasks \u2013 thinking, acting, reasoning and decision-making are routine. But, when the professors arrived on campus three years ago, they introduced a new curriculum connecting brain skills with technology.<\/p>\n<p>The husband and wife team launched Georgia Southern\u2019s robotics lab, where students can enroll in a mobile robotics capstone design course. This course doesn\u2019t teach to the text, however \u2013 engineering technology students gain hands-on experience by designing their own robots in the lab.<\/p>\n<p>This successful pairing of academics and technology has positioned the University within the emerging field of robotics research. A further offshoot of the course is the popular Robotics Team, a group of students who have designed a firefighting robot and a lawnmower robot, earning top honors in international competitions over the past two years under the advisement of Rios-Gutierrez and Alba-Flores.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cInitially, they developed very simple robots,\u201d said Rios-Gutierrez. The second year, the team entered its first competition tying Georgia Tech for 12th place. \u201cRight away, one of our students got a job offer from a company in California,\u201d he said. Rios-Gutierrez said that the students built all of the robots from scratch, sometimes spending upwards of four hours each day in the lab.<\/p>\n<p>Each member brings an academic strength to the group in programming, mechanical or electrical engineering. This is especially important, said Alba-Flores, because the construction of the robot is possible through students combining their knowledge. \u201cThe students gain a lot of confidence working in teams, and they are able to bring their ideas to the table,\u201d said Alba-Flores. While one student\u2019s concentration may be building, others, like physics major Samantha Jacobs, are experts in developing algorithms. Her contributions put the finishing touches on programming a robot\u2019s movements.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur robots show corporations what Georgia Southern students can do,\u201d said Ryan Smith, a senior electrical engineering technology major. \u201cFor example, this experience has taught me skills in the areas of motors, sensors and programming robots.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have the ability to test different technologies that could be applied to real life situations,\u201d said Rios-Gutierrez, explaining the benefits of the robotics curriculum.<\/p>\n<p>One invention simulating a real-life situation is a computer-controlled robot that can detect an alarm for a fire in a house, garage or car. The students constructed an intricate maze through which the firefighting robot travels to extinguish a fire.<\/p>\n<p>The team took top honors last year in the Expert Division at Trinity College\u2019s International Firefighting Robotic Contest in Hartford, Conn., and earned an honorable mention in another category for having the most advanced robot, which featured 120 teams from China, Israel, Indonesia, Portugal, Korea, Canada and the United States. This year, their firefighting robot earned third place in the Expert Division, one of the highest categories in the competition.<\/p>\n<p>One of the most technologically advanced robots in the lab is the team\u2019s lawnmower, which won fourth place in last year\u2019s international competition at Wright University in Dayton, Ohio.<\/p>\n<p>Throughout a six-month-long building process, technological additions were made to the basic frame of a lawnmower as it was transformed into a robot. The \u201cbrains\u201d of the robot are an on-board laptop computer that receives all of the information from sensors (including a GPS) and video camera, which control the navigation and identify objects and obstacles. The result is a lawnmower robot that can mow a specific area of grass. For an added challenge, the lawnmower had to navigate around flower beds, and an autonomous dog, simulating actual obstacles that humans encounter during yard work.<\/p>\n<p>Georgia Southern\u2019s foray into robotics has offered engineering students a place on the cutting edge of developments in the industry, and afforded them opportunities to pursue a range of career options. \u201cOur students get excited, because they can apply their engineering knowledge directly to a project,\u201d said Alba-Flores. \u201cThey have to solve very different, difficult problems, and when they enter the job market after graduation, they will have hands-on skills that apply to solving some of the same practical problems in the workplace.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"byline\">~ Mary Beth Spence<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Student Team is on the Cutting Edge of Robotics Technology<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9937,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-4186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","tag-summer-2011"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}