For the past semester, a team of nine students on PAVE have been building a robot for the 2008 Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC). The IGVC will be held in Rochester, MI from May 30 to June 2.

The student’s robot, called Kratos, is 3 feet wide, 4 feet long, stands 5 feet tall and weights in at 210 lbs. It has an array of sensors including a GPS receiver, digital compass and color stereo camera. With these, it can navigate between waypoints on a field while safely avoiding obstacles such as trash cans, cones barricades and fences. Kratos is also capable of detecting and following lane markings painted in the grass or road. A copy of our technical paper will be available.

We will update the website with our progress during the IGVC … stay tuned.

Special thanks to the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the Keller Center for Innovation in Engineering Education and Ted Todd ’67 for supporting our efforts.