Recently, 16 students from the UK Engineering Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) student chapter traveled to Orlando, Florida, for IEEE’s SoutheastCon, its annual IEEE Region 3 technical, professional, and student conference.
The students participated as a volunteer team for the main hardware competition, a senior design team for the open hardware competition, a circuit competition team, an ethics competition team and in the promotional t-shirt competition. Many students also participated in the networking competition and all past and present officers from the UK chapter participated in a leadership training.
The UK team returned with wins in the following categories:
Competition Summary:
Each student chapter in IEEE Region 3 can enter—at most—one robot. Those robots are considered for participation in the main hardware competition. Additional robots from the chapter, robots built by chapters outside the region, or by middle and high schoolers, professionals and others are allowed to compete in the open hardware category.
The teams were tasked with cleaning up the imaginary amusement park “Duck Gardens” after being hit by a hurricane. On the playing field, the 12”x12”x12” maximum-sized robots needed to drive to two corners of the field to “feed” the manatees and alligators with playing chips in different colors and then they need to clean up statue pieces and ducks from the field. The final goal was to build up three statues and put ducks atop of each, in addition to putting seven ducks into a designated pond area.
A total of 30 teams competed in the hardware competitions. Teams from both the main and open competitions participate in the first three rounds equally. Points from these rounds were added up to a total score for ranking. After the first three rounds, the volunteer team competing in the main competition went into a final round of eight. The volunteer team scored high enough to compete in the final against Virginia Tech, where they walked away the winners! The open completion went into a final four, where our senior design team ended up ranking third out of the four teams in the final.
The circuits team was challenged by the imaginary company "GeoLatLong LTD" to develop a proof of concept to take a programmable logic controller output and translate it to their Global Radio system. The team had to develop a low-cost prototype that also had to visually display packet status. The radio signal had to also report temperature and humidity information. The team had to build a basic prototype and submit documentation of their design.
Each student branch is allowed to enter up to 4 items in the competition. Each item must include the IEEE logo and the school name and/or “IEEE SoutheastCon 2023” incorporated into the design. The students must hold a virtual or in person product design review with a panel composed of at least three faculty/staff at their university or IEEE professional section members. Students are required to find the members for the panel and set up the review.
According to Regina Hannemann, faculty advisor for the UK IEEE student chapter, the first place win in the hardware category was a big one.
“To put this win in perspective: The Traveling Trophy of the SoutheastCon Hardware competition lists the winners back to 1981. Since then, this is the third time UK has brought home the first place. The last two times, our participating students were not even born yet (1989 and 1995),” Hannemann stated.
Traveling Students:
Joshua Caudill CPE Graduating Senior
Official Hardware (Volunteer Team)
Leadership Training
Parker Feezor CPE/EE Graduating Senior
Morgan Garrity CHE & EES Junior
Ethics
Networking
Dawson Messer CPE Junior
Brandon Holt EE Senior
Holden Hooper CPE Senior
Circuit Design
Melissa Hannemann EE & Aero Freshman
Promotional Design - T-shirt
Officer Training
Brayden Reichelderfer EE Graduating Senior
Open Hardware
Sameer Mittal EE Graduating Senior
Charlie Armstrong CPE Graduating Senior
John Curtsinger CPE Graduating Senior
Liam Murphy EE Freshman
Nick Schuler EE Junior
Cole Cuddy EE MS
Official Hardware Team - Graduate Mentor
Lauryn Gregory ME Freshman
Hersch Nathan
Non-Traveling Students:
Ilya Segal CPE Senior
Ethan Shidler EE Sophomore
