Dunwoody students receive sportsmanship award for fourth year in a row.
While most don’t necessarily relish the idea of snowstorms and clearing driveways…there are some folks who do. And you’ll likely find them at the annual Autonomous Snowplow Competition.
Dunwoody Robotics & Manufacturing students have competed in the Institute of Navigation (ION’s) Autonomous Snowplow Competition, since its inauguration in 2011. Held during the St. Paul Winter Carnival, the event serves as an opportunity for universities, colleges, and the general public to showcase hand-built machines that can independently clear piles of snow without any manual control.
It’s one of the Robotics & Manufacturing student’s favorite and most successful competitions, and the teams have the record to prove it.
Last year, Dunwoody placed 3rd and 5th in the competition.
And this year, Dunwoody earned its highest place to date when Team Wendigo brought home 2nd place and a $4,000 prize.
Dunwoody’s Snow Devils Team closely followed with 5th place and a $700 prize.
But for Dunwoody students, the annual event is about more than just winning. It’s also about sharing their love and knowledge of technology with the judges and spectators—and even the competition itself.
Snowplow Competition about more than just winning
“All that knowledge and experience doesn’t count for much if you don’t find ways to use it,” Automated Systems & Robotics student and Wendigo Team member Jeremy Berg said.
“This event isn’t just about who can take first place—it’s about seeing different ideas for autonomous thinking in action,” Berg added. “These people are our future coworkers and friends, and we want to be the go-to people to lend a hand or solve any issue.”
That mentality has contributed to the College earning the sportsmanship award in 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, and again this year, 2018.
Sportsmanship Award has meaningful history
Created by ION in 2012, the sportsmanship award honors the team that exhibited the best sportspersonship throughout the competition.
The award was renamed the Dr. Nattu Natarajan Golden Smile Award just a few years later after University of Michigan-Dearborn professor and competition leader Dr. Narasimhamurthi (Nattu) Natarajan, who passed away from a lung illness on the Saturday morning of the 2016 competition.
The award and its significance means a great deal to Dunwoody.
“I worked with Professor Natu at the competition those first few years,” Robotics & Manufacturing Dean E.J. Daigle said. “And he loved the Dunwoody students and teamwork.
“Many of these teams are traveling hundreds or even thousands of miles to compete. As a local team, it is easy for us to pack up extra tools and supplies to help teams make repairs to their vehicles.
“We have made it our mission each year to ensure that every team competes.”
And that’s exactly what they did.
The value of teamwork
Daig
le shared that one of the reasons Dunwoody received the award this year is because his students were able to help out Case Western’s Sno-Joke robot, which had completely dead batteries on the last day of the competition.
With no safe or easy way to charge it at the event, the team thought they might be out of luck.
But by using personal jumper cables from Dunwoody students’ cars, “We were able to find a way to parallel their batteries with ours and maintain running the battery chargers at full capacity,” Daigle explained. “This allowed us to charge their machines and our machines at the same time.”
Thanks to the students’ quick thinking, the team, which had originally missed their scheduled run time, was able to compete at the end of the day Sunday—even beating out Dunwoody for fourth place.
The students helped another team in a similar scenario back in 2016.
Daigle recalls that at one point during that competition, a school announced they were going to quit due to technical difficulties when another team suggested they, “find Dunwoody–they can fix anything.”
“To me, that is far more valuable than whatever place you come in,” Daigle said. “I couldn’t be any prouder.”
Learn more about Dunwoody Robotics & Manufacturing.
