Posted April 14, 2015

Engineering team’s robotic mouse wins design award

Video Production: Megan Chiplock

Three Temple College of Engineering students won the Excellence in Design award for their robotic micromouse at the Fourth Annual Brown University Robotics Olympiad on April 11.

Electrical and computer engineering majors Abby Sydnes, Class of 2017, and James Novino, Class of 2016, along with mechanical engineering major Jake Holohan, Class of 2016, used 3-D modeling to design and build their micromouse, a 20 x 20 x 20 cm autonomous robotic device that can map and traverse a maze in the shortest time possible.

“The big thing with using 3-D modeling is that it lets you rapid prototype,” said Novino, about designing Temple’s micromouse. “It allows you to change your design very quickly without spending a lot of time and money.”

The Temple team competed against teams from universities such as Brown, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Lehigh and Delaware, as well as Worcester and Rensselaer polytechnic institutes and Union College.

All three students are part of Electrical Engineering Associate Professor John Helferty’s Student Space Exploration and Embedded Systems Laboratory.