Kansas Ag Connection - K-State's Robotics Team Wins 4th Straight Championship

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K-State's Robotics Team Wins 4th Straight Championship
Kansas Ag Connection - 07/30/2010

Kansas State University students won their fourth consecutive Robotics Championship at the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers international annual meeting in Pittsburgh, Penn.

The competition encourages university student teams to create robotic solutions for future challenges in the food and fiber production systems. The 2010 competition required the robot to accurately measure the tree height in a forest providing an estimate of cellulostic material available for bio-energy production.

The K-State team competed against teams from the University of Florida, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Texas A&M and Oklahoma State University.

K-State students who participated in the competition and their hometowns included: Dan Bigham (Meriden, Kan.), Joe Dvorak (Manhattan, Kan.), Wei Han (Canada), Seth Perkins (Wichita, Kan.), Xu Wang (China), Brent Ware (Shawnee Mission, Kan.) and Huiquan Zhang (China). Other team members include: Audrey George (Salina, Kan.), Ryan Goetsch (Overland Park, Kan.), Katie Hildebrand (Stafford, Kan.), Grant Keller (St. Francis, Kan.), Peng Li, (China) and Levi VanPelt (Manhattan, Kan.).

The advisor for K-State student robotics team is Naiqian Zhang, who is a professor in Biological and Agricultural Engineering.

"This time, we finished in 9.1 seconds with 100 percent accuracy," Zhang wrote in a congratulatory message to all team members. "The second place team used 74 seconds to reach 87.5 percent accuracy to complete the task. The third place team reached an accuracy of 62.5 percent in 69 seconds."

Another K-State team placed second in the G.B. Gunlogson Student Environmental Design Competition: Fountain Wars Contest at the ASABE meeting. In that competition, teams prepared fountain designs to meet aesthetics display and technical task requirements. After a presentation of their design, teams were given two hours to build their fountain. Upon completion, each fountain was tested for its ability to perform the two technical tasks and for its aesthetic display. Awards were based on separate scores of the written design, oral presentation, construction, technical tests and aesthetics.

K-State's 2010 Fountain Wars Design Team competition members included: Lorinda Bejot (Dodge City, Kan.), Kelly Borgen (Ensign, Kan.), Katie Handley (Onaga, Kan.), Levi Sutton (Manhattan, Kan.), Justine Sullivan (Lakin, Kan.) and Brent Ware (Shawnee Mission, Kan.). Other team members include: Allie Archer (McPherson, Kan.), Kari Friedrichs (Marysville, Kan.), Erin Mason (Greenfield, Mo.), Breanna Stout (Garden City, Kan.), and Ginger Pugh (Mayetta, Kan.).

Phil Barnes, associate professor and Mahbub Alam, professor - both in biological and agricultural engineering, serve as advisors for the Fountain Wars Design Team.

Scott Wiens of Inman, Kan. placed first in the K.K. Barnes Student Paper Award. The objective of this competition is to encourage undergraduate students to improve preparation of papers on agricultural and biological engineering subjects. The top three authors were invited to present their papers in the oral competition during the ASABE Annual International Meeting. Wiens' presentation was titled "Effects of Tensile Stress on Emitter Discharge of SDI Systems." Dan Rogers, professor in biological and agricultural engineering, served as the advisor.