Momentum - The Magazine for Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering Vol. 4 No. 2 Summer 2019 | Page 17

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agbot 2
that operates at 1,000 rpm.
agbot 3
“The tubes on the centrifuge are pre-loaded
with a sugar solution that will separate the soil
particle from micro-organisms,” Guo said. “Then
the robot arm collects a pipette and takes the top
layer from the tube in the centrifuge and puts it
in a storage unit where the sugar is washed off,
and part of the solution is picked up by pipette
again and deposited onto a microscope slide. The
filtration tower is washed between each sample to
eliminate cross-contamination.”
Each team in the competition was given an
automated microscope to use for the event. The
solution is then analyzed by the microscope and
result data uploaded to the cloud.
agbot 4
“The team did an exceptional job this year in
understanding all the goals of the competition
and working in multi-disciplinary teams to create
an exceptional vehicle,” Leonessa said. “They
were the only team to complete all the require-
ments outlined by the organizers, who said their
product was exactly what they were looking for.”