The 29th annual Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC) was held this past June in Rochester, Michigan. This competition will be a familiar classic to our alumni; RoboJackets has been in attendance every year since 2003, with the only breaks being in 2005 and 2020 due to a lack of manpower and the COVID-19 pandemic, respectively….
Category: Newsletter
Alumni Spotlight: Phillip Marks
Phillip recently moved from El Segundo, California, to Seattle, Washington, where he is currently helping open a second office as part of his role of site director at Second Order Effects, an electrical engineering consulting firm. Outside of work he enjoys hiking and backpacking, and is looking forward to exploring the PNW area this summer….
EVGP 2022 Competition
This past May RoboRacing attended evGrand Prix Autonomous 2022, our second entrance into the competition. The team’s first entrance to this competition was back in mid-September, and only 8 months later Rigatonii (another “i” included) was back on the track at the Purdue Grand Prix Track in Lafayette, Indiana. The team finished 4th place out…
AVC (Angry Vehicle Competition)
Some alumni may remember that RoboJackets has brought combat robots and RoboRacing robots, including Bigoli, out to Colorado to compete at Sparkfun AVC (Autonomous Vehicle Competition). Sparkfun has since stopped hosting that competition, but this past May a new AVC took its place: the Angry Vehicle Competition. This new AVC only has combat robotics in…
RoboNav End Effector Spotlight
RoboNav’s shift from IGVC to URC prompted the team to focus on finding solutions to new tasks requiring the robot to manipulate different objects such as rocks, tools and even an USB stick. To investigate these new components for the design of their rover, RoboNav’s mechanical team divided into 3 groups: the drive train, arm…
RetroTECH Social Spotlight
RoboJackets has a long history of involving its members in events beyond their weekly meetings. These have manifested as General Meetings, where the club would invite professors to give talks on technical topics that may or not be directly related to robotics. In addition to these, RJ would often host socials, in which members could…
Motorama 2022
One of the bigger competitions the BattleBots subteam has attended over the years has been Motorama, a car show in Harrisburg Pennsylvania that also has a combat robotics competition (Motorama Robot Conflict) hosted by NERC (Northeast Robotics Club). The competition has robots all across weight classes, from the diminutive 1 lb antweights all the way…
Meet the Core Officers
With the spring 2022 semester drawing to a close, the next core leadership team has been elected for the 2022-23 academic year. The core officer team is integral to the operation and success of the organization as a whole, ensuring that RoboJackets makes progress on its missions and goals. We would love to take this…
New Leadership
Occasionally, RoboJackets officers will have to leave their position in the organization, often due to internships or study abroad opportunities that would limit their ability to perform their duties as an officer. In these situations interim elections are held to determine their replacements for the spring. We took some time to meet these new officers…
MyRoboJackets Android
Over the years, RoboJackets has developed processes to support our primary mission of promoting, educating, and advancing robotics. From training to purchasing, these support processes impact members in quiet ways but drastically improve member experience and technical project execution. One tool that every member has used but probably few have noticed is the member management…