We are happy to announce that Midwest Motion Products has joined as a sponsor of our IGVC team. They gave us a generous discount on two MMP D22-376C-24V GP52-014 EU-500 gear motors. These 105 W motors are substantially more powerful than the 55 W motors that are currently powering Navi and will allow us to improve the robot's drivetrain. Additionally, the integrated 500 count per revolution optical encoders will make Navi's wheel odometry substantially more accurate.

We are happy to announce that National Instruments has joined as a sponsor of our IGVC team. Their generous donation will make it possible to make necessary upgrades Navi's drivetrain before upcoming competition. These modifications will fix several problems that became apparant during the past few weeks of heavy test driving.

Navi would not exist without the generous support of our sponsors. We are very grateful for National Instuments's support and are looking forward to collaborating more closely with them in the future.

After assembling the entirely custom hardware designed e-stop and making some minor modifications to the control code, we took Navi for her second test drive of the season. Now that all the sensors are mounted, wired, and tested, we are finally ready to do a fully autonomous test. Stay tuned for a fully autonomous test drive!

Our regional IEEE section is hosting an on campus talk on April 26th (Thursday) from 6:00-8:00 pm in BCC-120ABC. Dr. Robert Soni of Alcatel-Lucent (formerly Bell Labs) will be speaking about LightRadio, a technology that can:

"...optimize total network costs over time and to make the most of each wireless service provider’s existing assets and capabilities. LightRadio combines innovations in antennas, radios and base band processing and allows easy reconfiguration and software reprogramming of network elements."

Refreshments will be served. Also, this is a great opportunity to meet with local engineering professionals who will be attending the talk. See the attached flyer for more information and for instructions about how to RSVP.

In order to properly express our gratitude to all of our sponsors, we needed to make sure that we produced the highest quality decals for placing on Navi - our entry to the 2012 Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition this coming June In Rochester, MI. In order to complete this task we reached out to Sticker You and asked for a sponsorship for printing out decals for all of our sponsors. I'd like to present the final result, and boy are we excited to have these decals on our robot!

Rutgers IEEE would like to express a huge thank you to Sticker You for providing this service and we highly recommend them to anyone who is looking to print stickers, decals, and everything in between. Thank you Sticker You!