ECE robotics team takes 3rd place at IEEE Southeastcon

The annual regional conference of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Southeastcon 2002, was held in Columbia, S.C. in April. As always, one of the conference highlights was the student hardware competition. Students from 28 universities from the southeastern U.S. and Jamaica competed in a game of "pong," similar to the popular Atari video game from the 1970s. This contest, though, featured a twist - autonomous robots, played each other on a canted playing surface measuring approximately 4 by 8 feet. The robots were fed with a video signal from an overhead camera mounted above the black track on which white practice golf ball were volleyed.

Three teams from Clemson's electrical and computer engineering department competed internally to determine which would represent the University in Columbia. This project class, supervised by Randy Collins, associate professor, consisted of sophomores, juniors, and seniors. The team representing Clemson included Patrick Horne, Ben Muzal, Iris Johnson, Will McMahan, and Charly Hermanson.

The conference competition was a grueling double-elimination tournament, which lasted from 8:15 a.m. until 9:30 p.m. Clemson's robot, "Lucky" took third place, behind the University of Florida and Tennessee Tech.