ENGR 150 Robot Show December 11, 2008

Tommie Logging Company

Musical Fingers

On Thursday, December 11, 2008, the first ever University of St. Thomas Engineering Robot Show took place in the lower level of Binz.  Thirty-four teams of students from Introduction to Engineering, ENGR150, displayed their robots in a science fair type setting.  ENGR150 is a course that introduces engineering and engineering design to beginning engineering students.   The “robot” is their major design project during the semester.

For this course, the definition of robot is purposely left open-ended but the machine must be autonomous, computer-controlled, respond to input and "do something interesting", where the definition of “interesting" is left up to the team. Students are provided with some components including a BASIC Stamp microcontroller board, motors, diodes, assorted resistors, different types of switches, transistors, LED's and wire. Students may augment their robot with up to $40 of purchased and scavenged parts. The students have only about a month to complete their robot.

The winner of the best of show competition was the “Tommie Logging Company”.  Second place went to the “Party Starter” and third place to “The Flipper”.  Introduction to Engineering is taught by Dr. Kaye Smith.

The Party Starter

World Geography