Kevin's Robot Competition

On April 19th, it was the Design Day for the Mechanical Engineering program at the U of U.  For Kevin's mechatronics class, they had to build a remote controlled robot that could play basketball by getting the balls into scoring boxes using whatever method they could come up with.  The robot had to be able to start the competition by fitting inside a 15 x 15 inch box.  They started this project in the Fall of 2010.  It was a really difficult, intense project.  They had to build the entire thing from scratch AND program it to work.  Kevin and his group pretty much lived at the school working on this thing.   There were 34 groups to start off.  32 made it into the actual competition on April 19th.  Each round was 3 minutes long and there were always 3 balls in play at once.  It was a single elimination competition and they basically just had to score more baskets than the other team to move on.  Kevin's team absolutely blew everyone else away!  Their robot was amazingly fast and efficient.  Most rounds, Kevin's robot would have already scored at least 5 times before the other team even scored once!  Kevin drove the robot during the fourth round, which determined if they made it into the final round.  He did great and they moved to the final round.  They ended up winning the whole competition and coming in first out of 34 robots!  It was very impressive!  They even had their robot do a little victory dance after they won, haha.  Ryder and I were there cheering Kevin's robot on, along with his mom and sister.  It was really fun. 

 

The robot used a "claw" to pick up the ball

Making a basket in a practice session

Kevin's team, Sean, Ray, Brandon, and Kevin, with their robot

The finished robot

The robot during round 3

They were showing the competition live on a projector screen since there were a lot of people there

Happy after winning a round 3

We're number one!

Their poster talking about the robot

Ryder eating some lunch with Grandma and Aunt Brianna

This is the playing court

Kevin getting ready to drive in the 4th round

The Champions!

Kevin was also awarded a scholarship at a lunch that day from a company called Washaki Energy.  He was one of two undergrad students to receive a scholarship from them.  He has since received another scholarship from the school.  Those will definitely help us out a lot!  That week he also got his acceptance letter for the graduate program for Mechanical Engineering at the U of U.  At the end of the semester, he got his grades back and he got 1 A- and four A's!  That is a 3.97 in a semester taking 17 credits of which none were elective classes, all were core classes. That's so awesome!  I'm so dang proud of my hubby and how hard he works.  It's hard during the semester because he really does spend more time at school than at home and I hardly ever see him, but it's all worth it in the long run. He is an incredibly driven, hardworking man and I'm so thankful because I know he does it for me and Ryder.

Now that school is out for the summer, he has started meeting with the professor
 who he will be working with on his Master's research.  He is also currently looking for an internship for the summer.  He has applied at a bunch of places, so we will just wait and see now.