Electrical engineering and computer science undergrads in ACM TechNews

Congrats to the robotic mouse makers at the Jacobs School. They landed in the 18 May issue of ACM TechNews. (In the photo above, they are cutting their own metal pegs for the maze). The 4 minute video is here, if you haven't seen it already.

The RSS feed for ACM TechNews is here...and I also added it to my new list of tech sites at the bottom of the right-side column of this blog.

Robotic Mouse Makes Maze Debut at UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering
UCSD News

University of California, San Diego (UCSD) Jacobs School of Engineering researchers have designed and built a robotic mouse and developed software to teach the robot to navigate through a maze. The robot navigates the maze using a pair of wheels and two self-lubricating sliders made from high-tech cutting board material. The robot, which is about the size of a cylindrical cookie jar, uses a set of distance sensors that project light onto the maze walls, which bounces back and is used to identify openings. The sensor-based approach gives the robot vision capabilities without having to deal with the complexities surrounding cameras, says UCSD student Jeffrey Wurzbach, who worked on the project. The robot was built for the MicroMouse competition, which tasks students with controlling an entire robotics system, including hardware, low-level code, high-level code, and all related debugging tools. UCSD professor Charles Tu says graduate school admissions committees and potential employers are looking for this kind of experience. In addition to designing and building the robot, the team spent five weeks building the 10-foot by 10-foot maze for the competition.

From "Robotic Mouse Makes Maze Debut at UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering"

Bohemian Rhapsody Song Segmentation

Bohemian Rhapsody is a heterogeneous song. We know that. Now, computers can "know" it too. I am still talking about the research in the press release I put out yesterday. This is a photo showing the new song segmentation process in action, for Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody.

Also, I'm liking to 2:30 second video about the making of the Facebook music discovery game video...again.

Chris Jablonski from ZDNet and sister sites blogged about the music dicovery Facebook games and video.

Herd It Game on FaceBook

The screen shots below are from the new Facebook music discovery game called Herd It created by electrical engineers at UC San Diego. A new press release on research related to Herd It is out.

Junkyard Derby Video 2009

Pirates AND "space pirates from space" competing in the same UC San Diego student competition. That's right...and there is so much more to Junkyard Derby, a student event in which students build cars from junk and then race them down a hill on campus.

Congratulations to the AIAA team, which won first place. The silver shuttle/plane-like car was driven by Colin Sheredy, an undergrad from the mechanical and aerospace engineering department.




There are photos below and on the Calit2 photostream.

Junkyard Derby 2009 Photos

Technology for Early-Cancer Diagnosis Leads Bioengineering Grad Student to Many Prizes and a Startup Company

Raj Krishnan is a bioengineering graduate student leading a research project that may change the way cancer is diagnosed. His goal is to create new tools that catch cancer at its very earliest stages by identifying secondary biomarkers that are present long before tumors appear or other biomakers are evident.

In 2009, Krishnan has won three major University of California awards for his research. He is also heading up a startup company that aims to make this technology available to the world, where it may help people catch cancer earlier...and when it comes to cancer diagnsis, earlier is certainly better.

Robotic Mice in a Maze

A couple of Fridays ago, I spent the afternoon with five of the Jacobs School undergrads who make up the UC San Diego MicroMouse team. They were deep into prep mode because the following morning, their robotic mouse had to be ready to solve a maze with no help from humans.

Of course there were midterms to be preparing for, and all the usual Friday afternoon distractions on a college campus, but none of that mattered. Software bugs had to be found and fixed. The maze had to be cleaned. And there was even another algorithm to be implemented.

If you have five minutes, watch the video embedded below [high rez YouTube version here] (or read the full story). I hope it gives you a glimpse of team engineering in action.



The students made the sofa in the background from the recycled wood from the deck they built as a level construction platform for the maze.



The fireworks (above) started when students cut nails for the maze.