So this past winter, the leader of the Ohio State recruiting team at work sent out a mass email to OSU alums to see if anyone was interested in joining the recruiting team. So I looked at the email and thought about it, and figured, "Why not?" If nothing else, it could be a fun experience.
So I told my boss that I wanted to be on the OSU recruiting team, and he wholly supported me, saying that he thought I would be a good representative. So at first, I figured I was just going to help out every so often. But at our first team meeting, the head folks showed a list of leadership positions that they needed filled for this year. I saw one that struck my fancy and decided to volunteer for it. That position was "FEH and Honors and Scholars Focal."
It made sense to me because I was in both programs when I was at Ohio State. The Honors and Scholars program was great, but what really caught my eye was the FEH program. This is the Freshmen Engineering Honors program, which I was fortunate to be a part of my first year at OSU. The coolest part about FEH is that you get to split off into teams of 4 and build a robot in Spring Quarter and then a competition is held at the end of the year to see which team has built the best robot.
The instructors give you a problem that your robot has to solve, and you can attack the problem in any way you want to (within the rules, of course). But the coolest part is that it has to be totally hands-off. That is, you press the "start" button and then the robot has to do everything else on its own, including making decisions and executing tasks in the right order to complete the course objectives. It's a great program that gives you a taste of real-world engineering problem solving as a college freshman, which was fascinating for me. And of course, companies like it because we get to see young engineering talent in action.
So I participated in the program as a freshman 10 years ago, and now I had a chance to go back and watch this year's competition as a representative from GE and even to serve as a judge! Exciting!
So the first thing that struck me was that the problem statement and the course were significantly more difficult than it was for us 10 years ago. This year, the teams had to build a robot that could manage a small farm simulation. That is, the robot had to be able to traverse rough terrain, harvest specific crops and drop them off in specific bins, drop a bail of hay onto a conveyor, and pull a wagon out of the barn... all in 2 minutes or less!! So you can imagine how difficult this task can be, especially considering the robot had to designed, built, and tested in about 8 weeks' time.
So below are some pictures I took from this year's competition:
As you can see, the course was very challenging. Of course, they have made some improvements since I was in the class. They added a GPS system that hangs over the course to send position information to the robots to help them know where they are on the course. When I was in the competition 10 years ago, we didn't have this feature. We simply had to measure distances and then keep track of where the robot was by counting wheel rotations. It's amazing to think of how far our technology has come in just the last 10 years.
I also got to talk to some of my former professors and classmates that were there. It was cool to talk to some guys and see what they have done with their lives since we were in school. And I got to talk to some representatives from other companies such as John Deere, Shell, P&G, Exxon, etc.
I've included some pictures from back when I was in the program in 2001. A few things you'll notice right away (other than the fact that I was so skinny back then)... our course was much less complex, but it was also much larger. So we spent a majority of our 2-minute time period just traveling from one point to another. Also, we could only compete 2 robots at a time, whereas this year's course allowed 4 to run simultaneously.
But I remember a lot of cool things about our project, and in pretty good detail. Just thinking of all the tasks that our robot had to do, it amazes me to this day that our team was able to make it work. We had to identify which side of the course we started on (via black/white surface detection), we had to determine which of the 4 boxes to pick up (via IR frequency input), and also determine which bin to drop it off into. And finally, we had to navigate our way through the course with only the lines on the course and the walls to serve as reference points. But looking back, it was such a fun time. Sometimes I wish we could do it all again. But then again, this is basically the kind of stuff that I do in my job every day. Just cool stuff.
I've included photos from my project below. Notice the poor camera quality. It's amazing how far our digital cameras have come since then too.
And while we are on the topic of technology, I had an interesting evening last Monday night. I came home from a church function and the power on my whole block was out due to the storms. When I pulled up to my house, the first thing I realized was that I couldn't open my garage door, so I had to park outside in my driveway. Then when I got in the house, there was literally no light anywhere. So luckily, I had a flashlight in my car and the batteries were charged. So I came in the house and used my flashlight to get around. It's funny, but you don't realize how much we depend on electricity until we don't have it. I strolled into the kitchen and realized the fridge was not powered. And since my alarm clock didn't work, I set the alarm on my phone for the morning. And then I sat in the living room and just pondered on how all of our entertainment and technology rely so much on electricity.
So with my flashlight in hand, I got my Bible out and sat the flashlight on the arm of my couch and read a few chapters from Numbers and Psalms (I've been following the RC3 journal since about April). And I thought about how people in the olden days must have read their Bibles by candlelight and I felt a weird connection back to a simpler time without all the distractions of our modernized world. And right then and there, as I read my Bible by flashlight, I praised God for the fact that His Word withstands everything in this world that otherwise obstructs our relationship with Him. And The Lord reminded me, through the way that He led Moses and the Israelites through the wilderness and provided for them even in their habitual disobedience, just how much He loves us, and how He will always reveal Himself to those who earnestly seek Him with their whole heart.
But I thought that it was somewhat ironic that I had these two experiences within days of each other. It is true that man is capable of some amazing things with the technology that we have today. But that can be made into nothing very quickly by the very hand of God if He so chooses.
Very humbling...
No comments:
Post a Comment