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Above, front row from left: Harry Tamayo, Zi Teng, Sevana Avanessian, Ya Li, Paul Wang, Edder Rivera, Jerry Lane, (IGV lead judge), Ka C Cheok (IGV lead ludge). Back row from left: Prof. C.T. Lin, Harout Markarian, Amiel Hartman, Alfie Gil, Andrew Sudono, Robert Breyer, Benjamin Mashian, Raffi Dersarkissian, Sultan Alkeebali, Alex Anikstein (team project manager)[/img]

P6090254Red RAVEN[/img]

On the heels of the college’s grand prize win in the international competition last year, CSUN’s 2012 Intelligent Ground Vehicle team did the near-impossible: it once again took the top prize in the annual IGV competition, beating out 49 other teams from across the nation and around the world.

The IGV competition, cosponsored by AUVSI and the U.S. Army’s Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC), requires teams to design and build an autonomous ground vehicle, then put it through its paces in a series of challenges.

CSUN entered two vehicles this year. Its LINJA vehicle, named in homage to C.T. Lin, the project’s advisor, placed third in the design challenge but encountered mechanical problems on the course. Red RAVEN 2.0, a retooling of last year’s Red RAVEN vehicle, placed fourth in the design challenge, then went on to beat out all competitors to win the grand prize.

P6100289[/img]“A good robot or intelligent vehicle needs to include two major elements,” says Lin. “One, it should be able to move in a tight spot with fine motion. Two, it needs on-board intelligence, which really comes from the software algorithm added to the system. It has to analyze the situation around the robot and based on the real-time feed of data collected by sensors, make good decisions.”

Clearly, Red Raven 2.0 met these criteria and now has the championship to prove it. This year was the seventh time CSUN entered the competition, which was held June 8-11 at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan.