by Dallas Downing. When RoboJackets was founded in 2000, it was a handful of students making combat robots in the basement of the Howey Physics Building. Today RoboJackets has grown to over 200 dues-paying members spread across five competitive teams in a 17,000 square-foot workspace shared with the rest of the Student Competition Center. However,…
Category: March 21 Newsletter
A Look at URC: RoboJackets’s Newest Competition
by Jonathan Spalten. RoboJackets has a wide berth of competitions its members participate in. In an effort to broaden our horizons further, RoboNav has made the decision to participate in the University Rover Challenge. Simply stated, URC’s challenge is to “design and build the next generation of Mars rovers that will one day work alongside…
Spotlight on IT and Web Dev: MyRoboJackets and More
by Kyla Qi. RoboJackets might be mainly focused on robotics, but there’s a lot of administrative work that goes into running such a large organization. Dues payments must be recorded, access to shop space and code repositories must be managed, and attendance must be tracked. In recent years, some members of our IT team have…
The Computer Vision and Perception Techniques of the Autonomous Teams
by Evan Bretl. One of the most critical functions of any autonomous vehicle is the ability to perceive its environment. Much of a typical robotics technology stack (mapping, planning, motion control) would be impossible without adequately sensing and comprehending the surroundings. Given the fundamental nature of machine perception to a functioning autonomous robot, RoboJackets software…