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MAC DADI Rides On

MU’s Robotics Team debuted their robot, MAC DADI, at the ATMAE National Conference last month.

Members of MU's Robotics Team, who brought MAC DADI to life.

The 2011 Association of Technology, Management and Applied Engineering (ATMAE) Student Chapter/Robotics Team at Millersville University recently returned from the ATMAE National Conference held November 9-12 in Cleveland, Ohio. The team spent the last year developing Millersville’s Automatic Color-sorter with Dedicated Active Dual-drive Integration, or MAC DADI; a custom robot designed to retrieve colored ping pong balls, sort them and deliver them to designated drop off locations.

MAC DADI is the third robot developed by the team. This year’s design was extremely sophisticated and the largest mobile robot the team has ever constructed. MAC DADI’s control was distributed over three independent microcontrollers running in parallel sequencing a tremendous amount of inputs and outputs.

“The project took approximately one year (including the summer) and more than 3,000 man-hours to complete,” said Dr. John Wright, professor of applied engineering, safety and technology and the team’s advisor.

MAC DADI, the third robot developed by MU's Robotics Team.

Although MAC DADI did not win the overall competition, Millersville’s entry did win the majority of the independent awards including Best Electrical/Control Methodology, Best Manufacturing and Best Technical Paper. The team now boasts winning 24 awards across several engineering, technology and computer science robotics competitions since 2001, when the robotics team was launched. In 2010, the team won the ATMAE Robotics Cup with SAM (Semi-autonomous Marauder).

In addition to the robotics team awards, team member Dave Campbell placed third in the Haig Vahradian Technology Challenge (Quiz Bowl Competition) and Brandon Lalli won the Virtual Welding Competition, placing first and winning himself a brand new Lincoln Electric MIG welder.

“I am extremely proud of our team and our accomplishments,” says Wright.

Twelve team members attended the ATMAE Conference in Cleveland including  Campbell, Sean Carter, Pauline Gemberling, Jake Girton, Phil Grigonis, Jon Hanson, Robert Hopkin, Wayne Lady, Lalli, Ritchie Mauck, Nate Miklos and Bradley Sensenig (team captain).

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