Fall 2003
December
The 3rd annual OCCRA Women's Robotics Competition was held on Saturday, Dec. 6 at the Field House.
OCCRA (Oakland County Competitive Robotics Association) is an association of Oakland County high
school robotics teams that have joined to form a league where 110-pound robots compete against
each other in a sports-like game. Unlike the popular FIRST competitions, OCCRA requires the
entire robot be student-designed and built. MCS Department has been sponsoring this event
since 2001 in order to help young women become more enthusiastic about science and engineering
careers.
Dr. Maria Vaz, Associate Provost and Dean of Graduate Programs gave opening remarks as
a top-level woman at LTU. Lawrence Tech female professors Dr. Lisa Anneberg, Dr. Patricia
Shamamy and Dr. Valentina Tobos served as judges. Also the following five LTU women engineering
undergrads helped judge coordinated by Dr. Shamamy: Rebecca Dyer, Beth Falk, Rachel Rubinlicht,
Kaori Sakai and Kelly Wesley. Dr. Chambers gave impressive closing remarks to congratulate their
successes and motivated female students to go into science and engineering careers.
During the event, students in Dr. Chung's Intelligent Systems class demonstrated obstacle
avoidance challenges using laptop robots with computer vision capability as the class project.
Pictured above are (from left to right) Mohammad Jallad, Michael Nasers, Chia Lun Chiang,
Maurice Tedder, Chun-Wei Chen, Andrey Chernolutskiy, Yevgeniya Tarakhovsky,
Dr. Charles M. Chambers, Stephen Vachon, Shih-Nung Chen and Chien-Tai Lo. Maurice Tedder,
LTU ACM Chapter Chair introduced LTU laptop robots and the obstacle challenge to the audience.
They are planning to enter IGVC 2004 international robot competitions in June 2004. Go LTUbots!
This event was not possible without the following people's dedicated supports: Alan Mclaughlin,
Director of Student Activities; Scott Trudeau, Assistant Director of Student Activities;
Matt Maracle and Shirley Kett, Campus facilities; Brent Bishop, LTU Dining Services;
Maurice Tedder and Shih-Nung Chen, MCS Robotics lab student assistant. Especially, LTU
security officers were busy in opening doors, since we had to continue to work after normal ;)
working hours to setup and cleanup the event. The Detroit News, Dec. 5th, has an article
about OCCRA robot competition at LTU on
page 4D. The web version of the article can be found at:
www.detnews.com/2003/oakland/0312/05/d04-342355.htm.
Please check out 32 photos of the event at
ltu164.ltu.edu/mcsnews/occra03/occra1.html.
Also if you need a videotape of this event, please email to chung@ltu.edu
Chan-Jin Chung, host of OCCRA competition at LTU
November
Fall 2003
Senior Project
Presentations
MCS Dept. Email Newsletter, 12-04-03
Mr. Don Wilcher, the author of "Lego Mindstorms Interfacing" and
"Lego Mindstorms Mechatronics", gave a talk on Monday, December 1 as a Robofest
mini lecture. The how to guide lab manual discussed in the mini seminar
can be found at www.family-science.net.
Congratulations to all of the first Lawrence Tech Association for Computing Machinery
(ACM) programming contest participants. We ate Subway sandwiches ordered by ACM treasurer
Woody Floyd and everyone worked very hard trying to solve our challenging contest problem.
We had a very good turn out with a total of 12 contestants grouped into 9 teams with 3
teams of two members. The majors of the participants included 9 CS majors, 1 Math/CS, 1 BSIT
and 1 ECE major. In addition to our contest participants, ACM faculty adviser Dr. Chan-Jin
Chung and ACM Chair and Co-Chair Maurice Tedder and Jesse Brindle were the proctors
for the contest. The ACM thanks the LTU Student Government for providing prizes and the
Math and Computer Science Department for sponsoring the food for all participants.
Unfortunately, no one won the Nov. 25 contest but participants will have another chance
to claim a prize, with a different contest problem, at the next ACM programming competition
on Tuesday February 3, 2004 from 12:15 – 2:15PM with $300 in prizes. Report by Maurice Tedder, LTU ACM Chair
Seven Computer Science students became judges for the First Lego League 2003 held at
the Dexter Elmhurst Community Center in Detroit on November 22 hosted by Cranbrook Institute of
Science (CIS). The proud judges are: Vincent Chen,
Maurice Tedder, Wan-Lin Chou, Ali Khazaal, Abu Ahmed, Prakash Gurung and Jason Lo (listed
from right to left in the photo above). They interviewed eleven teams and decided
the winners of the Programming Award,
the Robust Design Award, the Innovative Design
Award and the Presentation Award. Dr. Chung served as coordinator of all the Judges and
videotaped
the technical interviews with the Lego robot teams. These teams consisted of
5th grade through 9th grade students.
Abu, who served as an Robust Design Award judge, said, "My experience in the Lego Robotic
Competition was very interesting.
I had lot of fun working with young kids from elementary and middle schools.
I was very amazed by young children of today on how well they work together and
think to solve a problem. The most surprising thing to me was how advanced these kids are
in computer, such as writing programs and coming up with solutions to various missions.
Being a Judge in this competition was a thrilling experience. I had to be responsible
and also be fair on judging the competition but, the best thing was I learned something
in my computer science class and was able to use my knowledge on judging the competition."
Ali, who served as programming judge, said, "I had a wonderful time in the robotic competition.
I met so many kids from
many different schools. All the kids showed incredible knowledge in Lego
programming. It was very exciting to be a judge, because I learned something
in my computer science class and I was able to apply it in the competition as a judge."
"Lego Robot competition is a great experience for participants," Jason, who served as the
Innovative Design Award judge said. "It's not only just a tool of learning but a great
inspirator to illuminate the creation they can invent by their own hand,
a great chance to see the order and meaning behind every life, and
a dynamic challenge and encouragement for teamwork." And he continued:
"While society is changing fast, it's optimistic to see the leaders of the future (our next generation)
to solve complex and difficult tasks through Lego Robot Education."
Lawrence Tech University was recognized as a supporter for the CIS/FLL site in Detroit. Please go to:
Michigan FLL List.
Some photos of the event can be found here. Videotape is
available to check out in the LTU robotics lab.
Prof. Ruth Favro spoke at the Humanities Symposium
on Tuesday, November 18. Her topic was "The Chaos Game."
October
The LTU Math Club held its inaugural meeting with a talk by Prof. Jerrold
Grossman of Oakland University. Dr. Grossman talked on "Mathematical Games for
Fun and Profit" to a standing room only crowd. Everyone enjoyed the talk,
and members of the audience ("Alice" and "Bob") helped to play the games.
The presentation appealed to all levels but of course, this being a math talk,
Dr. Grossman also proved a theorem! - Report by Prof. Favro.
MCS Dept. Email Newsletter, 10-26-03
MCS Dept. Email Newsletter, 10-10-03
September
An MSDNAA seminar was held on Wed. Sep. 24 in CW51, MSDNAA office.
Rita Chen demonstrated
how to write Windows Applications with C# and
how to write Web Applications with ASP.NET
using Visual Studio .NET tools.
If you want to download her Power Point file, please check out
LTU/MCS MSDNAA homepage at ltu164.ltu.edu/msdnaa.
The LTU ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) Student
Chapter had a robot demonstration on Mon Sep. 22 in
CW21. Maurice Tedder, the Chair of ACM, introduced robotics projects
which ACM members are involved in. He himself and Vincent Chen demonstrated
LTU laptop robots.
Tobias Hackstock demonstrated autonomous Khepera
robot soccer games. He is representing the USA for FIRA
FIRA Cup 2003 in Austria. Here is a AVI file (936KB) from the demo.
MCS Dept. Email Newsletter, 9-12-03
The Fall 2003 MCS Department Welcome Open House was held on Sep. 9th in S321. 31 students and 12 faculty and
staff members attended the first session, which started at 12:15pm.
There were 20 students and 8 faculty members
in the evening session, which started at 5:00pm. Dr. Bindschadler gave remarks useful for the study and
announced some advising changes: students are supposed choose their advisors.
Sign up begins on Sep. 10th in the Department office.
MSDNAA was introduced by Dr. Chung. Maurice Tedder
introduced the LTU-ACM chapter.
Brad Dillon and
Prof. Favro introduced the MAA Chapter at LTU.
MCS Dept. Email Newsletter, 9-5-03
Need a tutor? Please make an appointment with a tutor at AAC using
myTutoring. This system has been developed by MCS student and faculty member.
Please check out ltu-online.com for unofficial information
about LTU campus life. The site has no affiliation with Lawrence Technological University.