Mr. Robot

Ole Miss Electrical Engineering Senior Design Group took on a task of designing and building a search and rescue robot. Leslie Merritt and I (Daniel Forman) interviewed a team member of the group. Jeff Tannehill was the member that we interviewed.

Q.What was the reason for building the robot?
A. The original reason for doing the project was to satisfy senior design class. The robot project is part of IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Southeast Student Hardware Competition. The idea is for the robot to serve as a rescue robot to help rescuers, such as in the Haiti earthquake.

Q. How many team members did you work with? How long did it take to design and build the robot?
A. The senior design class was made up of 10 people. The group worked on the project for two semesters.

Q. What was your purpose for being in group?
A. My purpose was to help do the coding on the robot. I have a degree from Duke in Computer Science. Before coding actually took place, I helped with desiging and building an EMF (Electromagnetic Field) sensor. Then, I helped with a color sensor.

Q. What was the purpose of the two sensors you worked on?
A. The EMF sensor was to find a hazard underneath the floor. It was suppose to resemble a broken gas line or an electrical problem inside a disaster area. The color sensor was to determine the condition of the victims the robot found. The vicitims were made up of a PVC cap with a circuit inside. The circuit was connected to a green LED (Light Emitting Diode). The LED had three states which were blinking, on, and off. The blinking state represented alive. The on state represented unconcious and the off state represented deceased.

Q. Where did the competition take place? How many other schools were there?
A. The competition took place in Nashville, Tenn. The final count on total schools participating was 39.

Q. The big question is how did the robot fare in the competition?
A. The competition was made up of three rounds. The first two rounds, the teams would take the highest of the two runs as their score. The final round was a tournament of single elimination of the top eight teams. After the first two rounds, Ole Miss was ranked in the top five. In the tournament, we faced the team that would eventually make it to the final round. The robot was disqualified for accidently running into a victim. Overall, the team and robot ended up being 8th. We beat Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, and our arch rivals Mississippi State.

 Jeff Tannehill (Mr. Robot) holding the robot.

We thank Mr. Tannehill for his time doing the interview. We are super proud of the group. Go Rebs (black bears)!