{"id":829,"date":"2016-02-17T19:51:50","date_gmt":"2016-02-18T00:51:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2016\/02\/17\/furman-robot-aldo-goes-to-new-york-city-and-makes-his-student-creators-proud\/"},"modified":"2022-11-07T14:11:53","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T19:11:53","slug":"furman-robot-aldo-goes-to-new-york-city-and-makes-his-student-creators-proud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/furman-robot-aldo-goes-to-new-york-city-and-makes-his-student-creators-proud\/","title":{"rendered":"Furman robot “Aldo” goes to NYC, makes his student creators proud"},"content":{"rendered":"

OCTOBER 5, 2012
\nby Vince Moore, Director of News and Media Relations<\/p>\n

The Furman University Physics Robotics Team finished in second place in the 2012 Atmel Robotics Contest at the World Maker Faire in the New York Hall of Science in New York City the weekend of Sept. 28-30.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

“Aldo” is surrounded by his creators (from left to right) Kristina Pardo, Andrea Fant, Evdokiya Kostadinova and Haris Kahn.<\/p><\/div>\n

Furman students Andrea Fant of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Haris Khan of Islamabad, Pakistan, Evdokiya Kostadinova of Plovdiv, Bulgaria, and Kristina Pardo of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., constructed an autonomous robot named \u201cAldo\u201d that performed a specific set of challenges established by the sponsor, the Atmel Corporation.<\/p>\n

The project, part of the Furman Physics STEM Initiative, has been a four-month-long activity on the part of the students.\u00a0 It is under the direction of Furman physics professor Dr. John Conrad.<\/p>\n

Conrad said the contest participants were asked to design a robot that could perform a series of acts autonomously. Four balls\u2014two ping pong balls and two golf balls\u2014were lined up randomly on an array of pedestals, and the robot was required to determine which was which and deliver the balls to the proper bins for each.<\/p>\n

Conrad said it was an impressive feat for the students to program a robot to perform such specific tasks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe order of the four balls is random and unknown by the robot,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cUsing optical sensors, the robot had to navigate to the first pedestal position where it stopped, picked up a ball, and determined whether the ball was a ping pong ball or golf ball.\u00a0 The robot then had to navigate a somewhat tortuous path to deposit the ping pong balls in one receptacle bin and the golf balls in another. The robot had to repeat this procedure until all four balls were retrieved, sorted, transported and delivered.\u201d<\/p>\n

Based in San Jose, Calif., Atmel Corporation is a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of microcontrollers, capacitive touch solutions, advanced logic, mixed-signal, nonvolatile memory and radio frequency (RF) components.<\/p>\n

For more information, visit the Physics STEM initiative website<\/a> or contact professor John Conrad at 864-294-3643 or john.conrad@furman.edu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OCTOBER 5, 2012
\nby Vince Moore, Director of News and Media Relations<\/p>\n

“Aldo,” the Furman robot who was born in the Physics Department lab this fall, went to New York City last weekend and more than held his own at the 2012 Atmel Robotics Contest at the World Maker Faire in the New York Hall of Science. “Aldo” finished second in the competition, thanks in no small part to his creators–Furman students Andrea Fant, Haris Khan, Evdokiya Kostadinova and Kristina Pardo. The project, part of the Furman Physics STEM Initiative, has been a four-month-long activity on the part of the students.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":830,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-physics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}