The PAVE crew had quite an exciting adventure at this year’s Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition. After many, many long hours of driving, non-stop software writing and days of hard work, the team has returned safety to Princeton, NJ with lots of good memories, a prestigious award and a strong desire to finally get some rest! Read more about our trip after the break.

PAVE sent seven members to the IGVC this year: Derrick Yu, Brenton Partridge, Joshua Newman, Roland Hwang, Laszlo Szocs, Tony Zhu, and Ryan Corey. Solomon Abiola and Arul Suresh also contributed to the project but were unable to attend the competition.

Upon arriving at the competition site in Rochestor, MI, the team set up their work station and began to get down to business. Deciding to rewrite the software libraries from scratch for Phobetor, PAVE‘s entry, the software team was busy from day one, working diligently to get the new code up and running on the robot. Meanwhile, the hardware team set about undertaking some last minute upgrades for the robot, finalizing the water-proofing of the system and improving the air circulation & heat dissipation of the chassis. Between taking breaks for food, working on the design presentation and getting in a few hours of sleep, the days spent at the competition site were all but uneventful.

Speaking of the design competition, the PAVE crew successfully made it into the presentation finals after being chosen as one of the six lucky teams to advance, out of the over fifty present! Brenton, Joshua and Tony did an excellent job presenting Phobetor to the panel of judges, impressing them with a thorough and detailed look at the system’s core software algorithms and key hardware innovations. Combined with the scores from the technical paper that was submitted earlier, the 2010 IGVC group went on to claim 2nd place overall in the design challenge, winning over $2000 for the team!

The team continued to work hard to qualify for the Navigation Challenege, which requires Phobetor to hit a variety of GPS waypoints sprawled across a field in the shortest amount of time. Successfully concluding the challenge with a run on the final course, the team remains optimistic about Phobetor‘s future and has already begun to plan the upgrades necessary to expand their autonomous platform so that they may return next year and sweep the competition!

Finally, the team would just like to give a big thanks to all of the hardware and software members who had helped make this year’s trip to the IGVC possible. Everyone’s contribution made a big difference, and the team is excited to get even more folks involved next year!

For more information about Phobetor, visit our 2010 IGVC Project Page