The University of Waterloo Nanorobotics Group (UW_NRG) will be attending its second National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Mobile Microrobotics Challenge, this year in Shanghai, China from May 9-13, 2011.
UW_NRG is a student team formed in 2007 by four students in Nanotechnology and Mechatronics Engineering. The team has grown to over 25 students with backgrounds in Nanotechnology, Mechatronics, Electrical and Computer Engineering. UW_NRG is sponsored by companies such as Advanced Micro Devices, RIM and Sun Microsystems, as well as through WEEF, and makes use of both the University of Western Ontario NanoFab and the University of Manitoba NanoFab.
This year’s challenge requires teams to send their robots through a course as fast as possible. The course is designed to simulate medical applications such as robots that travel through blood vessels. UW_NRG is working on two robots this year: one called EMMA 2.0, named after last year’s EMMA (for ElectroMagnetic Microrobotic Actuation) which improves on its predecessor, and a microfluidics-based robot which is controlled using a laser.
This competition follows their third place finish in the 2010 NIST Mobile Microrobotics Challenge in Anchorage, Alaska, where they placed third out of the eleven competing teams. The team was the only Canadian and only undergraduate team to compete. Their robot, EMMA applied Waterloo’s research in nanosized electromagnetic attraction. It managed to reach times under a second on dash competitions consistently but could not manipulate objects due to orientation issues. Hopefully, the team can perform as well or better than last year.
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