The IGVC Committee has decided to defer entering the 2016 IGVC Competition in June in order to focus on preparing new members.
While the robot has many of its features ready for competition, training new members with the necessary skills to continue participating in the competition in the future is our current objective. As some of the current members and advising students graduate before the 2017 competition, preparing team members who will participate in the competition for future years is vital to keeping RAS active and competitive for this competition. Graduating members are still helping with the committee through passing on their experience and knowledge of the systems necessary, knowing that their efforts will be rewarded when the robot enters competition.
IGVC is still scheduled to enter the 2017 competition with its current members. While we may not be entering this year, new people are always welcome to join and learn what is necessary for IGVC to compete and win. Right now we are analyzing the physical system of the robot and replacing any parts that are in disrepair. In addition, we are working on the control set-up for manually driving the robot, changing it from acceleration-based controls to velocity-based controls. For the software portion, we are setting up the electronic emergency brake and remote associated with it. We plan on continuing our work for the remainder of the semester and resume work at the beginning of the Fall 2016 semester.