U.S. Navy photo by MC2 (SW) Alexia Riveracorrea Ensign Keith Mitchell, a systems engineering major stands by a robot named Robo-Goat designed and built by midshipmen for the 18th Annual Intelligence Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC) held in Rochester Hills, Mich., in June 2010. The IGVC is a student competition where participants are required to design and build a small unmanned ground vehicle capable of traversing an outdoor obstacle course by remote control.

The IGVC is a student competition sponsored every year by the Association for Unmanned Vehicles Systems International. In the challenge, student teams were required to design and build a small unmanned ground vehicle capable of traversing an outdoor obstacle course by remote control.

‘‘The course was laid out on a grassy field and cluttered with traffic cones, garbage cans and barricades,” said Naval Academy systems engineering professor Joel Esposito. ‘‘The robot was required to stay within lane markings that were spray painted on the ground.”

The academy’s team created ‘‘Robo-Goat,” a computer-controlled robot, using a combination of the global positioning system, laser range finders and image processing to help avoid obstacles along the course.

‘‘We accomplished this by creating a code that set various parameters and thresholds, and incorporating the usage of our camera and laser, while allowing them to sync with each other,” said Ensign Keith Mitchell, a systems engineering major. ‘‘We created the ‘Robo-Goat’ using the drive train of a standard electric wheelchair as our differential drive system and ‘hacked’ into it in order to control the velocity of each wheel using various processors.”

According to Mitchell, the team started work on this project in fall 2009.

‘‘The first semester involved a lot of planning, as well as discussing materials and code we might need or have to design,” said Mitchell. ‘‘The second semester included building the robot, implementing our code, testing our programs and finally competing.”

The robot’s body is made of a combination of aluminum tubing, plywood and Plexiglas, weighs roughly 230 pounds, and is about the size of a wheelchair.

‘‘It uses a standard laptop that processes all the information and gives us a view of what the robot is seeing and how it’s reacting to certain situations, such as different shades of color and how each looks under different intensities of light,” said Mitchell.

This is the second year in a row the academy has competed in the event.

‘‘This year's efforts built off last year’s team design. Last year we won the Rookie of the Year Award. We intend to return next year and are looking for midshipmen to join the effort.”