A few weeks ago we had to take on the very difficult task of cleaning up the UW Robotics lab. During the clean up, we came across a lot of old projects that past members of the team had worked on. It was interesting to see components and technology that we had worked with and some that we did not recognize. The projects reminded us of how fast technology changes because every day, people decide to take on the challenge of solving problems. This really is what the culture of UW Robotics and uwaterloo engineering is about. The UW Robotics Team was founded in summer of 2003 by enterprising engineering students who decided that they wanted to combine passion and skill to build cool things. This mindset has taken the team from working in the WEEF lab during lunch to having a full size lab in E5, but there’s more to that story.
Over the years we have partaken in many competitions and have done a series of outreach events, and we’ve done really well in most of them. We currently have three main competitions we are involved in. One competition requires us to build a rover that should transverse a terrain similar to Mars and perform tasks that require precision, like soil sample analysis and astronaut assistance. Another one requires us to build a small autonomous race car that combines the use of cameras and a Lidar sensor to compete with other cars in circuit and drag races. The last competition involves building a fully autonomous vehicle that uses path planning algorithms and computer vision optimizations to find an object in a complex maze with obstacles.
The team is growing and will be doing a lot more cool things in the future. We’ve had members who have gone on to work at great companies or even start their own because of their experience on the team. Getting involved with our team or any other student design team is a great way to meet awesome people, gain practical experience, and solve real problems!
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