The Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC) team of Georgia Tech’s RoboJackets won 3rd place at the IGVC, held at Oakland University in Michigan June 3-6. This marks the 5th year the Robojackets have finished within the top 10 at the competition.

The RoboJackets competed against 30 other teams from the United States, Canada, Jordan and India. The goal of the yearly competition is to design, manufacture and program an unmanned ground vehicle to navigate through an outdoor obstacle course. Consisting of a grass terrain, the course requires vehicles to avoid obstacles, such as cones, trashcans and flags, while remaining in the set path.

This year, the team entered “Roxi,” an unmanned ground vehicle that is completely autonomous and drives the course based on the pre-program algorithms on the sun-shielded i7 laptop. The team aimed to improve both the mechanical and electrical weaknesses of previous designs while decreasing the weight of the vehicle from its predecessor,“Jeani.” The vehicle’s improvements and efficiency helped Tech jump from 6th place the last year to 3rd place at this year’s competition.

The RoboJackets IGVC team consists of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, aerospace engineering and computer science majors and has competed in this competition for six years. 

Written by Georgia Tech Communications & Marketing Student Media Member Katie McGuire