Welcome to Robotics @ Maryland
R@M is the University of Maryland's student robotics team. We design and build autonomous robots to compete against other schools and organizations. The club formed in 2006; since then, R@M has grown to four robots and roughly 40 members.
Robotics @ Maryland membership is open to any UMD student, regardless of major. To get involved, contact any of our officers or come to a meeting.
Thank you to our generous sponsors!
News (see archive)
Regular R@M Meetings Have Started
Just a notice that we are now on our regular meeting schedule:
Tuesdays and Thursdays
6:00 PM
Neutral Buoyancy Research Facility
If you're interesting in joining, just stop by.
Welcome Perspective Members!
We have two introductory meetings for new members:
- Thursday, September 13th at 6pm in KEB 1110 (Kim Engineering building)
- Tuesday, September 18th at 6pm in AVW 2460 (AV Williams building)
NOTICE, THE LOCATION FOR THE TUESDAY MEETING HAS CHANGED
Below is a video of last seasons competition, which will give you a good idea of what the competition is and what we have to do.
Welcome to Robotics @ Maryland
Interested in robotics? We will be holding two introductory meetings where you can meet the Robotics @ Maryland team (and our robot Tortuga). Learn about what our robot does, what the team does to make it work, and what you could be doing as a new member.
The meetings are scheduled as follows:
- Thursday, September 13
- 6:00 PM in the Kim Engineering Building, room 1110 (the big lecture hall next to the Kim Cafe)
- Tuesday, September 18
- 6:00 PM, Location to be determined (check back soon!)
Our regular meetings are every Tuesday and Thursday, 6:00PM to 9:00PM in the Neutral Buoyancy Research Facility (NBRF). If you can't make the intro meeting, come by anytime to meet the team and learn how to get started.
We welcome all majors - we will teach you what you need to know, as long as you are willing to learn. There are many technical and non-technical positions available.
It's likely we can find something to match your interest; here are a few ideas:
- All engineering - Technical design and construction
- Computer science - Programming
- Math, physics - Controls
- Business - Club finances
- Art, design, film, writing, web development - Publicity (i.e. flyers, videos, posters, website, and robot visual appeal)
- IT and computer networking - Back-end development and distribution tools
This list is by no means exhaustive, so if you didn't see anything specific you like but still want to work with us and Tortuga, stop by anyway!
Robosub is Now Officially Wrapped-Up
Robosub is now over, and since we're all finally home safely we have time to post an update.
Our qualifying run was enough to get us into the finals, which were on Sunday the 22nd. That morning we loaded Tortuga into the truck as usual.
We had done some repairs to the sonar system the night before, so we used our practice run to test it out. We had the third slot for the final run, so as the time neared we made our way to the dock for final preparations.
Tortuga was loaded onto the crane and placed in the water...
...And the run began. We made a run for one of the uprights on the first couple attempts, but some interference was confusing Tortuga's magnetometer.
Our software team decided to pull Tortuga back for one final attempt and go straight for the sonar task.
Unfortunately the clock ran out before she could reach the octagon, ultimately putting us in 6th place for the competition. Out of about 30 international teams, we think that's a pretty good place to be.
Thanks to all of our sponsors and fans for their support in helping us get through another year. RoboSub is a massive undertaking, and we couldn't dream of doing it without your support. Special thanks to our two graduating team members:
- Kit Sczudlo, who will be working for Amazon in Washington soon
- Gary Sullivan, who is currently working at Wabtec
Best wishes for your future careers. We'll miss you guys!
For now we're all going to take a break and get some rest, but you can be sure that when the 2012 fall term starts we'll be back at it preparing for next year's competition.
Tortuga Just Keeps Swimming
Lots of updates today. Yesterday was mostly a day of steady progress in testing Tortuga's software. The testing doesn't even end when we leave TRANSDEC; last night and the night before we tested until Tortuga's batteries ran out.
Today we had our first semi-final run in the morning. The team was feeling a bit apprehensive as we prepared to put Tortuga in the water.
We ended up pulling the sub back twice, but on the third run we accomplished everything we intended.
The symbols represent the tasks we completed; our line shows we passed through the gate, over two paths, through one set of uprights, we surfaced in the correct octagon, and picked up and dropped the wreath(you can see what all of the tasks for this year are at the RoboSub website). We are happy with the results, but of course the competition isn't over yet, so later in the day it was back in the water for more testing.
The robot's software is constantly being updated, so after a run Gary, Eliot, and Stephen (the software and controls team members) will discuss what changes need to be made.
In-between intense practice runs, sometimes we even manage to have fun. As the competition was coming to a close for the day, Kit decided to see how many hats he could collect. There were contributions from our competitors Cornell and ETS, as well as an AUVSI hat to top it off.
Tomorrow is our second semi-final run; we're going to see if we can complete even more tasks and really cement us a spot in the finals.