Nov. 15, 2010
Contact: Amy Hewes
805-756-6402; ahewes@calpoly.edu
Cal Poly’s Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers
Wins National Design Contest
SAN LUIS OBISPO – Cal Poly’s chapter of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers earned first- and third-place awards in the design competition and second in the technical poster competition at this year’s SHPE National Conference at the Duke Energy Center in Cincinnati, Ohio.
The design competition challenged participants to design and build robots that would encourage children to be more active. The first-place team presented a Dual Sport Bot, a basketball hoop that uses sonar sensors and infrared technology to detect players within a three-foot radius and then moves away from them. To shoot, children have to run after the hoop.
The team consisted of mechanical engineering senior Arturo ayal-Navarro, crop science junior Jake Muir, mechanical engineering senior Jorge Hernandez, computer engineering senior Mishal Shah, and civil engineering junior Saul Fierro. The group earned $3,000 in prize money and up to $5,000 in additional funds for pursuit of a patent.
Muir said the team had to put their winning product together quickly: “We had about seven weeks—two for the proposal and five to build a prototype, turn in the final version of the design concept paper and create a 20-minute presentation.”
Chris Clark, the team’s faculty adviser, emphasized that the students dedicated a lot of effort in a short time. “I am not surprised they won, given they had a fully operational demo of a mobile robot reacting to people and the baskets they scored,” he said.
Meanwhile, the third-place team developed the Jamm Jumper, which uses the power of music to get youngsters jumping. The team included captain and architectural engineering senior Manuel Ureno, computer engineering junior Adam Rizkalla, mechanical engineering senior Manuel Carrasco, mechanical engineering junior Jeremy Ramos, civil engineering senior Christina Ruiz, and civil engineering junior Stephanie Reveles.
A SHPE team from Stanford University took second place in the design contest.
Cal Poly mechanical engineering senior Cristal Vasquez authored the second-place Technical Poster, regarding “Development of a Highly Flexible Thermal Strap for the Portable Remote Imaging Spectrometer (PRISM).”
The National Conference is the largest technical and occupational conference for Hispanic engineers in the nation.
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