The UMKC-IEEE Robotics Team participated in the Annual IEEE Region 5 Business Meeting and Student Competitions which were held in Baton Rouge, LA on April 15-17, 2011. The student competitions featured a variety activities ranging from paper presentations, poster contests, circuit design competition, ethics competition, to the popular robotics competition and an SPAC (Student Professional Awareness Conference) students could arrive earlier to participate in the 3rd Annual Green Technology Conference which preceded the competitions by two days and included technical seminars on current and emerging topics related specifically to the development and use of Green Technologies. The Robotics Team’s nine members worked hard over the Fall semester and into the Spring semester to design and build an autonomous robot that had to perform a predetermined task simulating the harvest and delivery of energy—an interesting and challenging problem in this modern era of the quest for energy independence.

 The competition consisted of three 5 minute rounds of which a robot had three sources of “energy” to harvest from using a wide choice of storage techniques. After harvesting this energy, the student teams had to do some work with it by powering a small motor which raised a flag 12 inches. The team from UMKC proceeded to the second round where a hardware malfunction unfortunately prevented qualification for the third round. Over the years the UMKC Robotics Team’s designs have improved and a noticeable difference can be seen in the evolution of the robots that have been built. The team learned a lot and was able to interact with teams from other universities and share ideas.

 A total of 33 teams showed up for the robotics competition and nine teams for the circuits design competition. Of the 33 robotics teams only 15 were able to complete the course. The next IEEE Region 5 Annual Green Technologies Conference and Student Competitions will be held April 19-22, 2012 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. UMKC’s Robotics Team is planning on registering two robotics teams and also have a team in the circuit design competition. This year the team learned a lot from their mistakes and hopes to improve their performance tremendously next year. The rules will be released in October.