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

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.

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

Intelligent Car Initiative 2008-2010

The intelligent car initiative was proposed to combine the three main areas of research at the Computer Vision and Sensing Systems Laboratory: Driver Assistance, Vehicle Guidance and Navigation and Active/Passive Safety. The video demonstrates elements of lane detection, vehicle detection, road-sign detection, pedestrian detection, and Traffic Light Detection. The project is led by Siddhant Ahuja, software lead is Thanh Nguyen and the academic supervisor is Dr. Jonathan Wu. Fore more information please visit: uwindsor.ca/cvss

University of Windsor Students Win Autonomous Racing Challenge 2008

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

University of Windsor Students Win Autonomous Racing Challenge 2008

University of Windsor’s Team “Invincible” took first place in the Autonomous Racing Challenge 2008, held at University of Waterloo on April 26, 2008. The students designed and built fully autonomous vehicles that they put to the test in outdoor drag race and circuit competitions and in a static judging event. Windsor entered two teams, which included students from the Computer Vision and Sensing Systems Laboratory, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and even a Belle River District high school student completing his community service hours. The winning vehicle was designed with a unique single vision system. The students used state-of-the-art algorithms to enable the robot to autonomously navigate itself through the race track.

The competition is one of the toughest in Canada where the robotic vehicles must perform tasks in a complex environment without human guidance or control. These robots are finding their way in applications such as space exploration, mining, search and rescue, remote sensing and automotive inspection. Some are even becoming common around the home for routine tasks, such as vacuuming and mowing lawns. In the future, these robots will even park and drive cars. Participating teams included University of Waterloo (three entries), University of Western Ontario, University of British Columbia, McMaster University, University of Windsor (two entries), RoboMontreal and a former DARPA Grand Challenge competitor. Team leader Sid Ahuja summed it well: “We gained a valuable experience by participating and winning this challenge, and are looking forward to the one next year”.

Winning robot learns the art of detection

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

Winning robot learns the art of detection

Overcoming alternating bright sunlight and thunderstorms, camera flashes and students in red uniforms, a team from the University of Windsor recently won the National Autonomous Racing Challenge in Waterloo.

Members of Team Invincible - Ehsan Paruizi, left, Michael Stolarchuk and Thanh Nguyen - make adjustments to their autonomous robot. The team, part of the U of W's Computer Vision and Sensing Systems Laboratory, won the Autonomous Racing Challenge in Waterloo earlier this year. Pawel Dwulit, Windsor Star

A car that can drive itself

View CBC News’ coverage of our team below:

When a machine can think, its said to have artificial intelligence. Frankenstein and R2D2 are two examples from fiction. But there are plenty of applications in the real world too, and thats the topic of the Canadian conference of Artificial Intelligence taking place this week at the University of Windsor. Tom Taylor has more.

Surrounded by A-I: Students, industry experts design latest upgrades, gadgets and gizmos

View the A-Channel’s news coverage of our Team at:

Surrounded by A-I: Students, industry experts design latest upgrades, gadgets and gizmos

Imagine being at university surrounded by “artificial” intelligence.
While there’s no shortage of the old fashioned kind the St. Denis Centre was today transformed into a display of  A-I.
A-Channel’s Priya Mann reported on this interesting exploration into future technology that we could see on our streets in a few years.