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Embry-Riddle Senior Project Wins ASEE-SE Design Competition

Robot Vehicle Daytona Beach, Fla., April 13, 2005 -- A student team from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University recently took first place in the multidisciplinary category of the ASEE-SE conference design competition with a robot system that controls vehicle movements at an airport.

Embry-Riddle’s team of 14 Computer and Software Engineering undergraduate students and 19 other college teams went head to head at the American Society of Engineering Education Southeastern Section annual meeting and conference held April 3-5 at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga.

The Embry-Riddle team demonstrated a robot vehicle that monitors and controls other airport vehicles -- aircraft, gas trucks, baggage trucks – to keep them safely separated from each other.

“This student project has tremendous potential for application in the real world,” said Dr. Massood Towhidnejad, chairman of Embry-Riddle’s Computer and Software Engineering Department and advisor to the team. “It could solve vehicle-separation problems not only at airports, but also on highways.”

Embry-Riddle’s project involved collaborative work in three areas: software, hardware, and firmware. Firmware is software that runs on a piece of hardware embedded inside a system.

Team MembersThe students who developed the software were leader Chris Houdek, Lionel Amanfu, Steve Harvey, Sung-Wook Lim, Jose Lugo, and Caylyne Shelton. The hardware was designed by leader Jayson Bender, Jackson Doud, Adrian Drummon, and Tamara Flemming. Mike Potach, a lab technician in Embry-Riddle’s Lehman Engineering and Technology Center, provided hardware tech support, and Edwards Air Force Base in California donated $1,500. The firmware was handled by leader Mike Vacirca, Jayson Clifford, You De-Riviere, and Jason Pipparo. Besides Dr. Towhidnejad, the other advisor to the team was Farahzad Behi, associate professor of computing at Embry-Riddle.

The students created the robot system as their two-semester capstone project, required to complete the B.S. degrees in Computer and Software Engineering at Embry-Riddle.

Schools represented at the ASEE-SE competition included The Citadel, Georgia Southern University, James Madison University, Mercer University, Mississippi State University, Tennessee Technological University, University of Alabama, University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, University of Puerto Rico, and Western Kentucky University.

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, the world’s largest, fully accredited university specializing in aviation and aerospace, offers more than 30 degree programs in its colleges of Arts and Sciences, Aviation, Business, and Engineering. Embry-Riddle educates more than 30,000 students annually in undergraduate and graduate programs at residential campuses in Prescott, Ariz., and Daytona Beach, Fla., through the Extended Campus at more than 130 centers in the United States, Canada, Europe, and the Middle East, and through distance learning.