Momentum - The Magazine for Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering Vol. 2 No. 2 Summer 2017 | Page 29

news
notes
agBOT Challenge
Students do
well at E-Fest
Nine students attended the ASME
E-Fest at Tennessee Tech April
22-23 to compete in the Student
Design Competition to design and
build a robot that could climb up
stairs, throw a tennis ball, hit a golf
ball, lift a weight, and complete a
timed sprint. Of nearly 100 teams,
the students placed in the top 10.
Led by Brennan Goehl, the team
consisted of James Caputo, Wil-
liam Chamg, Andrew Seitz, Ben
Brott, Mohammed Alisa, Sebastian
Orellana, John Garmon, and An-
thony Zema. Caputo, the ASME-VT
president, also participated in the
Old Guard competition, winning
Best Technical Presentation and
3rd place overall.
Virginia Tech heads back to agBOT Challenge with a radical new autonomous vehicle.
The challenge, held June 24-25 in Rockville, Indiana, has competitors build a vehicle
capable of navigating fields, planting two-to-four 1,000-foot rows of corn, change
variety and spacing on demand, and stream data in real time to a base station. The
team is using a Yamaha Wolverine converted to an autonomous vehicle to tow a trailer
with a seeding system. The tow vehicle commands seeding operations and navigation.
The team presented their vehicle at the April 28 Senior Design Expo. The faculty advisor
is Associate Professor Alexander Leonessa.
VT earns PUNCH honors in event beta test
In a Beta version of a new competition, Virginia Tech won a head-to-head
competition against Rowan University of New Jersey in a precision aerial
package delivery event held in Blacksburg. The goal of the event, called PUNCH,
for Precision Unmanned Navigation and Cargo Handling, was to autonomously
deliver packages to specified targets on a field. Points were awarded based on
delivery speed, weight delivered, and accuracy.
“The success of the beta program makes me fairly confident the AIAA (Amer-
ican Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics ) will adopt this as an annually
sponsored competition, hopefully attracting 20-30 schools next year,” said Kevin
Kochersberger, associate professor of mechanical engineering.
MOMENTUM SUMMER'17
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