North Alabama Regional and State Science and Engineering Fairs

Thanks to the efforts of Jim Kennedy, the Huntsville Section participated in the North Alabama Regional Science and Engineering Fair. I would like to thank Jim Kennedy, Dr. Jorge Aunon, Willy Albanes, and Susan Bonne for judging this very important and worthy cause in support of our future engineering talent.

We are getting close to the State Science Fair activities and would like assistance for additional judges from our community of engineers. If you would like to help and be part of the judging process please contact Jim Kennedy at jamesrk@bellsouth.net. The State Science Fair will be on April 5th at UAH.

UAH Student Branch and IEEE SOUTHEASTCON

The UAH IEEE Student Branch is busy trying to get ready for the upcoming SOUTHEASTCON 2002's hardware competition. This year the Student Chapter has a very active participation with 3 teams with different robot's designs. With the SOUTHEASTCON just around the corner (April 5-7, 2002), the teams will compete against each other for the selection of the best robot design to be taken to Columbia, South Carolina. The competition among the teams will be held at UAH's Engineering Building (Rooms 124 and 141) on April 2nd, 2002 starting at 5:30 pm.

This years theme for the 2002 Southeastern Conference is "Learning from the Past - Innovating for the Future". Playing on that theme, the student hardware contest is derived from one of the earliest electronic games - PONG.

In the hardware competition for the 2002 Student Conference, a modified Pong game will be played by robots facing off across a rectangular playing field. This contest will exercise a wide variety of engineering skills, from circuits, to machinery, from electronics to power systems, and from microprocessors to dynamics of systems. Contestants will be provided with an individually-buffered signal from a video camera that views the field of the playing arena. From that signal, robots can determine the ball position and trajectory and use that information to position the paddle and return the ball.