Our general meetings will be held weekly at 8:00 pm on Thursdays in the Electrical Engineering, Room 205. The meetings are very informal and typically last until around 10:00 pm, so feel free to drop by whenever you are available. If you are interested in getting involved with one of our projects please attend one of our meetings and/or send an email to our discussion list (see the link in the left sidebar).

We are excited to announce that Linx Technologies has joined as a sponsor of our IGVC2012 team. They have generously donated four evaluation kits for use on Navi. In particular, we will be using either the EVAL-418-KH2 or EVAL-418-HHLR for our wireless e-stop and autonomous/teleoperation switch.

The KH2 series of transmitters and receivers work up to 1000 feet, support 3¹⁰ unique addresses for security, and transmit eight binary signals. All encoding and decoding is done in hardware so we no longer need a microcontroller for triggering the wireless e-stop. This is much simpler and more reliable than our existing solution.

Thanksgiving has rolled around again and it's a good opportunity to reflect on what we've accomplished over the last three months:

Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC)

• Chassis redesign was CADed, the parts were ordered, and it was assembled
• Mechanical mounts for the Manta G-125C cameras were machined and assembled
• Manta G-125C cameras donated by Allied Vision Technologies have been hardware synchronized
• Electronical system was redesigned to be safer and more reliable

Micromouse Competition

• Chassis was completely designed in CAD and is ready to be printed by SolidConcepts because of their generous donation
• Electronic components and sensors have been selected and ordered
• Layout of the printed circuit board (PCB) is nearing completion

Vex Robotics Competition (VRC)

• Final design for the competition robots are being modeled in CAD
• Several new drivetrains and manipulators are being prototyped and evaluated for inclusion on the final design

We've made a ton of progress over the last few months and look forward to making even more progress over the next few months.

Left: Redesigned Navi chassis for IGVC2012 without the casing or electronics mounted.
Right: Model of the Micromouse robot complete with infrared distance sensors.

HKN and IEEE are hosting an ECE Professor Panel on Tuesday, November 8 at 5:00 pm in Busch Campus Center, Center Hall, the lecture hall across from the International Lounge. This is a great opportunity to learn more about the department and how to get involved in research. Professors on the panel include include Dr. Sannuti, Dr. Daut, Dr. Petropulu, Dr. Gajic, and Dr. Caggiano. Refreshments will be served.

See the attached flyer for more information.

Accenture will be giving a "What is consulting?" presentation and holding a Q&A session on Tuesday, November 1st from 7:00 to 8:00 pm in the Busch Campus Center, Room 120. If you enter the main entrance of the campus center, Room 120 is to the right of the welcome desk, past the Cove and near the Quiet Lounge.

As Accenture is the largest consulting company in world, this is an amazing opportunity to learn more about the consulting industry from those work in it on a daily basis. After the talk we will have an informal Q&A session where you have the opportunity to ask the presenters about their projects and experiences - including answers from recent graduates.

This is a great networking opportunity and free food and beverages will be provided!