Robotics hardware competition
Life Member Committee regional student funding supported student competitions at SoutheastCon 2022. SoutheastCon is the annual IEEE Region 3 Technical, Professional, and Student Conference. It was held this year from March 31-April 3 in Mobile, Alabama at the Arthur R. Outlaw Convention Center. SoutheastCon brings together Computer Scientists, Electrical, and Computer Engineering professionals, faculty and students to share the latest information through technical sessions, tutorials, and exhibits. It is the most influential conference in Region 3 for promoting awareness of the technical contributions made by our profession to the advancement of engineering science and to the community.
The student program competitions included hardware, software, outreach, interview, resume, networking, ethics, and presentations. The hardware competition had 40 teams registered and the theme of the competition was based on Mardi Gras. It required schools to build robots that navigated a track that had randomly placed obstacles and Mardi Gras beads which had to be retrieved at the start of the course. The track had fishnets into which the beads were thrown by the robot to score points. The robots also showed each team’s school pride, playing a fight song or displaying their mascot.
The winners for this year’s student hardware competition were 1st – UNC Charlotte; 2nd – UNC Asheville; 3rd – University of Florida,
