point the high resolution camera at to get a better idea if it ’ s a target or not .”
Team VICTOR was able to acquire the necessary equipment and to be able to travel to Abu Dhabi through sponsorships from : MBZIRC competition organizer Khalifa University , Yoshimitsu Saito of NetSmile , the General Motors Foundation , and Virginia Tech . Spouses and Virginia Tech alumni Adam Rossi , a civil engineering major , and Laila Rossi , a psychology major in the College of Science , have also contributed to the team on behalf of their venture capital and private equity company , Indie . The Rossi ’ s also both earned masters ’ of business administration degrees from Virginia Tech ' s Pamplin College of Business .
The team is composed of about 20 people , including graduate students from mechanical , industrial and systems , aerospace and ocean , and electrical and computer engineering as well as three undergraduate students from mechanical engineering . Additionally , the team is collaborating directly with local companies Jensen Hughes , Inc . and Cowden Technologies , LLC and researchers from the University of Technology , Sydney , located in Australia .
“ The great thing about competitions such as this , or those like the DARPA ( Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ) challenges we ’ ve competed in in the past , is that they give scientists and researchers an even greater incentive in the realm of competition ,” said Furukawa , director of the Computational Multiphysics Systems Lab in the College of Engineering . “ It gives them an arena in which to push against each other to see what they can do by providing a common goal and seeing what strategies emerge to solve the same problem .”
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