Monday, May 16, 2011

Senior Design

One bit of information to note is that from my last blog, “Dr. Strangelove: How I Learned to Stop Worrying about Weather and Nuclear War at Discovery Park (part 2)”, after speaking with one of the engineering dean’s it was confirmed that the reason the second basement level is blocked is due to dangerous chemicals.  The video in my last blog is one of the pastimes in Texas.  Traditionally cowboys used to ride horses and bulls at a rodeo where they would try to stay on for 8 seconds.  In the nuclear warhead riding sport, the person who is able to stay on the nuclear warhead till it hits the ground wins.  Unfortunately win or lose you still die which is tragic but makes for great entertainment. (Just kidding and moving on to this blog)

A few weeks ago was Senior Design Day for the College of Engineering at UNT.  As an engineering student one of the last classes taken is Senior Design.  In senior design, a group of seniors in the same major team up and work on a project that spans over the fall and spring semester.  The project in senior design culminates the knowledge you've learned over the past four years.

While I wasn't able to talk with all the people that had a senior design project on display, I was able to view a few interesting projects.  One such project that I saw was called “Crate Jumpers”  by a group of Computer science and computer engineering majors.  It featured a robot that was able to determine whether it could safely enter or circumnavigate a meteor crater.  The robot was constructed out of a broken down Segway with an Xbox Kinnect used as a sensor in the front.  The sensor had infrared technology which could recognize when something was in it's path.  The robot was controlled using an Xbox controller.

I also spoke with some of the seniors for senior day to see what they had to do in regards to their project.  While the project itself may have not taken long, several research papers had to be written and presented.  One group even had to travel to Houston to present their research paper at a professional conference.

Overall senior day is a proud moment to look back from when you first started your engineering program and reflect on how much knowledge, experience, and good times you have acquired throughout that time.  Even though it was a long and hard road, you stuck to it and persevered till the end. 

Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.
~Confucius~

Congratulations to all seniors! 

Fight the Good Fight
Ya Boy Archie Wright!