This weekend, two teams of students will be competing in the 7th Annual Autonomous Snowplow Competition in Rice Park, St. Paul.
Come support Dunwoody College of Technology students at the 7th Annual ION Snowplow Competition during the St. Paul Winter Carnival in Rice Park this weekend! Snowplows will be competing from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. both Saturday and Sunday.
Dunwoody students have competed in the Institute of Navigation (ION) Autonomous Snow Plow Competition every year for the last six years. The competition challenges college students to design and build a robotic snowplow that can clear both a sidewalk and a driveway without any human interaction.
“This competition gives us a good chance to apply what we’ve learned in our courses,” said Automated Systems & Robotics student Nick Hajlo.
This year, Dunwoody will compete with two robots – the Snow Devil and the Wendigo.
The Snow Devil was built to compete in the first year of the competition. Since then, students have refined and added to this original design. The robot earned Third Place in last year’s competition and students hope their design improvements will place them in the top two this year. The robot follows magnetic strips that can be installed on any sidewalk or driveway.
The Wendigo; however, was designed and built just this year. Students from Welding, Automated Systems & Robotics, and Electronics Engineering Technology collaborated to bring this robot to life from the ground up. The Wendigo uses a combination of a machine vision system and an inertial measurement unit to navigate up and down sidewalks and driveways.
Dunwoody students will be competing alongside teams from Case Western Reserve University, Iowa State University, Michigan Technological University, North Dakota State University, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, University of St. Thomas, and Wayne State University.
The teams will present their designs to a panel of judges on Thursday evening at the Minnesota Science Museum. On Friday night, they’ll go through final safety checks before competing on Saturday and Sunday.
Learn more about Dunwoody’s Robotics & Manufacturing Department.