Another National First for Windsor's Robotic Team-Ingeniator

Team Invincible featured on the back cover of the Ingeniator magazine:

Team Invincible proved as good as its name by, once again, taking top honours at the Autonomous Racing Challenge, held at University of Waterloo in July.

The 2009 Champions defended their 2008 title against teams from University of Waterloo, (3 entries), University of Western Ontario (1 entry), University of British Columbia (5 entries), and McMaster University (1 entry). Sid Ahuja, a PhD student in the Electrical Engineering Computer Vision and Sensing Systems Lab, led the team along with Dr. Jonathan Wu as their advisor.

The robotic competition is one of the toughest in Canada. Students must design and build robotic vehicles that can perform specific tasks without any human guidance or control. This year’s competition was especially challenging with stop signs, traffic lights, moving obstacles, and a figure-eight race track.

Using cameras as sensors and complicated 3-D tracking programs, Windsor’s vehicle was able to:

• Outrun all competitors at a record breaking 27km/hr on the drag racing course-scoring a perfect 10 out of 10,
• Land the highest score with 8.3 out of 10 for looks and design,
• Finish the street-racing circuit in record time with another perfect “10″.

“It was an amazing experience”, says Sid. “We had hoped to defend our 2008 title but we never expected to do it by such a wide margin!”

The team plans to expand in 2010 in order to take on the Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, this June. “This will move the competition up a notch”, notes Sid. “We are looking forward to stretching our skills further, and making UWindsor proud.”

For more information on Team Invincible, and how you can help them reach their goal, contact Chris Allsop at callsop@uwindsor.ca or Sid Ahuja at ahuja5@uwindsor.ca

University of Windsor Students Win Autonomous Racing Challenge 2009

View the PEO’s (Professional Engineers of Ontario) Windsor-Essex Chapter news coverage of our Team at:

Autonomous Racing Challenge 2009

“Team Invincible” of the University of Windsor took top honours at the Autonomous Racing Challenge 2009, and successfully defended their title as the reigning champions. This year’s winning team included student members Sid Ahuja (Team Leader), Thanh Nguyen and Michael Stolarchuk. Interestingly enough, Michael was a high school student at the time of the competition. We expect to hear of good things from this group of future engineers as their careers advance!

Team Invincible featured in UWindsor Engineering Brochure

Snowtires-UBC's coverage of the Robot Racing 2009 competition

Matt from UBC, has uploaded some of the pictures and videos of the Robot Racing 2009 competition on his website. Click here to visit it. In his own words:

The Windsor robot was a torpedo: it went on to win the competition due to its mixture of vision guidance and raw power. A little frightening recovery at the end there, but awesome to behold.

Specifications of the winning robot-i2

Chassis	Traxxas E-Maxx, 1/10 scale Electric 4WD monster truck
Length	20.4 inches (518mm)
Front Track	16.4 inches (417mm)
Rear Track	16.5 inches (419mm)
Center Ground Clearance	4 inches (101mm)
Height (overall)	9.8 inches (248mm)
Wheelbase	13.2 inches (335mm)
Front and Rear Tires (pre-glued)	Maxx® Chevron (5.75″ x 3.8″)
Front and Rear Wheels	3.8″ Split-Spoke (chrome)
Speed Control Type (H-Bridge)	EVX-2 Forward/Reverse/Brake, Programmable Waterproof Electronic
Motors (Speed)	Dual Titan® 550, Fan Cooled (21-turn)
Motors (Steering)	Dual high torque servo motors
Transmission	Single-Speed (2nd gear only)
Overall Drive Ratio	18.67
Differential Type	Bevel Gear, Sealed, Limited Slip
Gear Pitch	32-Pitch
Chassis Structure/Material	Molded Composite Nylon Tub
Brake Type	Electronic
Drive System	Shaft-Driven 4WD
Steering	Bellcrank
Radio System (Optional)	Traxxas TQ 2216 4 channel waterproof 27Mhz receiver
Top Speed	30+mph
Cameras	Dual Point Grey Research’s Firefly MV (FMVU-03MTC-CS), USB 2.0 Camera 1/3″ CMOS CS-Mount.One camera detects the pylons and obstacles. Second camera detects the traffic light and the stop sign.
Optics	NT58-000 8.5mm Compact Fixed Focal Length Lens, for top camera.NT59-916 Varifocal Video Lens 3.5mm – 10.5mm Focal Length, for bottom Camera. NT46-575 M25.5mm x 0.5mm Mounted Linear Glass Polarizing Filter (Optional), to cut down the glare if present. NT59-163 (0.3 OD) and NT59-168 (0.6 OD) Mounted Absorptive ND Filters M25.5×0.50 (Optional), to cut down sunlight.
Laptop	Dell XPS M1330
Encoder (Optical)	Nubotics Wheel Watcher 2 (WW-02)
Control Circuitry	Dual Control Boards separate for Speed and Steering connected to laptop using the USB-Serial cables. PIC18F4331 microprocessor from Microchip with Internal Quadrature Encoder/Decoder logic

Robot racers return to winners circle

View the University of Windsor’s Daily News’ coverage of our Team at:

Robot racers return to winners circle

The key to winning a race is not to stand still, say UWindsor engineering students whose robot took top honours in the Autonomous Racing Challenge, July 11 at the University of Waterloo. It was the second straight year that Team Invincible beat out national competition to win the challenge, which puts vehicles through their paces without human guidance or control.

Two-time champions: UWindsor's Team Invincible—from left, Sid Ahuja, Michael Stolarchuk, and Thanh Nguyen—successfully defended their title at the Autonomous Racing Challenge with their robot, nicknamed i2.

The Windsor entry won all three stages of the contest—a drag race, a circuit course, and static judging.

“Many of the other entries this year were based on our winning design from last year,” said team leader Sid Ahuja, a doctoral student in electrical and computer engineering. “Fortunately, we had made improvements that allowed us to keep ahead of the competition.”

Ahuja said this year’s race was especially challenging because it incorporated stop signs, traffic lights, and moving obstacles on a track shaped in a figure eight. His Invincible teammates—fellow doctoral student Thanh Nguyen and Michael Stolarchuk, who just graduated from Belle River High School—were up to the challenge.

University's Robot Team Retains Title

View the Windsor Star’s news coverage of our Team at:

University’s Robot Team Retains Title

A team of students representing the University of Windsor has successfully defended its title at the Autonomous Racing Challenge, a robotic competition requiring machines to perform specific tasks without human guidance or control.

Members of Team Invincible are Sid Ahuja, Thanh Nguyen and Mike Stolarchuk, a high school student working with the university team.

CTV coverage of the 2009 Robot Racing

Watch the CTV news coverage of the 2009 Robot Racing event here.

Team Invincible-Canadian Champions!

Its my pleasure to report that Team Invincible took top honours at the Autonomous Racing Challenge 2009, and successfully defended their title as the reigning champions. The competition took place this Saturday, July 11 where teams from University of Waterloo, (3 entries), University of Western Ontario (1 entry), University of British Columbia (5 entries), McMaster University (1 entry), and University of Windsor (1 entry) took part.

The robotic competition is one of the toughest in Canada. The robot machines must perform specific tasks in a complex environment without human guidance or control. This year the competition was specially challenging due to the presence of stop signs, traffic lights, moving obstacles, and a figure eight race track.

Using cameras as sensors, and complicated 3-D tracking programs, our vehicle navigated a drag-racing course, scoring 10/10 (highest) travelling 27km/hr, passed a round of static judging on looks and design, scoring 8.83/10 (highest), then completed a street-racing circuit in a record time scoring, 10/10 (highest). For more information about the rules of the competition, please visit http://robotracing.org/

Speeding through the circuit race

The team this year consisted of Sid Ahuja (Team Leader), Thanh Nguyen (both of the
Computer Vision and Sensing Systems Laboratory, Department of Electrical
and Computer Engineering) and Michael Stolarchuk (High School Student working with students at the Computer Vision Lab).

The team members would like to thank Dr. Maher Sid-Ahmed, Dr. Jonathan Wu (Academic Advisor), Don Tersigni (Electronics Technologist), Christina Allsop (Faculty Development Officer), Ed Stolarchuk (Friend, Supporter), Frank Cicchello (Electronics Technologist), Shelby Marchand, and Andria Ballo, for their support and guidance throughout the project.

We are proud to recognize and thank the donors who have generously contributed to the 2009 Autonomous Racing Challenge. Our team exists thanks to the dedication, commitment and financial support of our donors:

- University of Windsor, Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering (Platinum Donor)
- University of Windsor, Alumni Association (Platinum Donor)
- University of Windsor, Computer Vision and Sensing Systems Laboratory (Platinum Donor)
- BASF (Elite Donor)
- Cheese Wheelz, Best Pizza in town (In-Kind Support)

Score Card-Robot Racing 2009

Team	Total	Drag Race	Static Judging	Circuit Race
Team Invincible	28.83	10/10	26.50/30 -> 8.83/10	13m 50.56s -> 10/10
Snowtires	21.22	5/10	24.67/30 -> 8.22/10	15m 25.16s -> 8/10
Glockenspiel	17.11	5/10	24.33/30 -> 8.11/10	33m 02s -> 4/10
Snowfury	12.28	0/10	18.83/30 -> 6.28/10	20m 00.16s -> 6/10
J5	9.78	0/10	23.33/30 -> 7.78/10	38m 44.07s -> 2/10
Webots	8.78	0/10	26.33/30 -> 8.78/10	0/10
Team Fujin	8.22	0/10	24.67/30 -> 8.22/10	0/10
A Team	8.14	0/10	24.43/30 -> 8.14/10	0/10
Sesame	7.89	0/10	23.67/30 -> 7.89/10	0/10
Horseshoe	6.28	0/10	18.83/30 -> 6.28/10	0/10