IEEE SoutheastCon Report 2011
Monday, April 11, 2011
Region 3 Southeastern Conference Report March 17-20, 2011
Nashville. Tennessee USA
University of Technology, Jamaica among top 3 Engineering Universities at IEEE SoutheastCon 2011
SoutheastCon is an Annual Region 3 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the world’s largest professional organization Technical, Professional, and Student Conference with ExCom
Meetings. http://www.southeastcon2011.org
. It brings together Computer Scientists, Electrical and
Computer Engineering professionals, faculty and students to share the latest information through technical sessions, tutorials, exhibits and meetings. The theme of this year’s conference was ‘Building
Global Engineers’.
The annual event dates back to May 1964, an inception of the IEEE, tailored to bond members of both students and professional engineers from the Southeastern region of United States and Jamaica. The annual event is hosted by a different university each year, the Jamaica Section last hosted the conference in 2003, and the 2011 hosts were Tennessee State University, Vanderbilt University and Tennessee
Technological University.
The University of Technology, Jamaica (UTech) excelled at the student conference section of
SoutheastCon held in Nashville Tennessee, U.S.A this year despite several challenges, such as logistics and financing. Representing Jamaica were Section Chair, Daniel Tulloch-Reid and Region 3, Area 9
Chair, Wilfred A. Roberts. UTech’s Student Branch of the IEEE has been attending and participating in the different competitions since 1991.
The three day event connects universities, companies and professionals from the various engineering disciplines. On the first day of the conference there are a number of seminars, tutorials and a welcome dinner tailored to the professional engineer looking to reconnect, network and guide student engineers seeking to be motivated by the various applications of technology and explore the ever evolving field of engineering. A major focus for the conference is student competitions which induced a total environment shift on the second day when students are given the opportunity in 6 different competitions to showcase the latest technology from their university. 70 percent of the attendees were students totaling 434, representing over 40 universities in the region, eager to learn from engineering seminars and showcase their Universities latest technology in these competitions. The competitions included
Hardware (Robotics), Software, Technical Papers, Ethics Papers, Branch Web Site, T-Shirt
Competition, and the Larry K. Wilson Regional Student Activities Award. The technical conference included topics across the discipline of technologies associated with electrical and computer engineering
(ECE).
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IEEE SoutheastCon Report 2011
On Thursday March 17, 2011 twelve students and their advisor all from the Faculty of Engineering and
Computing UTech left Jamaica to represent their university, country and the Caribbean region at the
SouthEastCon
TM
. The team arrived at Nashville 1200am Friday morning. After waking early they went straight to the hardware competition practice room. Students worked on the final design and testing of the robot from Friday morning straight through to the start of the competition Saturday morning at 8am.
Earlier in Jamaica leading up to their departure, students also spent several nights inside the Controls lab testing circuits, programming microprocessors, practicing Ethics cases and preparing technical presentations while maintaining a full school work schedule. The team comprised of students listed in
Table 1 with the team leader Kimroy Bailey and the team advisor Dr. Dave D Muir.
Students
Kimroy Bailey
Jamaal Wilson
U-Shane Taylor
Johniel White
Durvan McKenzie
Brent Richardson
Latania Morrison
Odane Kentish
Evon Williams
Dean Jones
Primary role
Student Paper
Ethics
Hardware
Hardware
Hardware
Hardware
Ethics
Ethics
Hardware
Hardware
Software
Website
Other
Hardware
School/Year
Eng 3 rd
Elect
T-Shirt
T-Shirt Eng 3 rd
Elect
Eng 3 rd
Elect
T-Shirt Eng 3 rd
Elect
Eng 3 rd
Elect
Eng 3 rd
Elect
Eng 3 rd
Elect
Eng 3 rd
Elect
Eng 3 rd
Elect
Hardware SCIT 4 th
Tennison Dougherty Software
Website
Hardware SCIT 4 th
Osane Lannaman Software Hardware Eng 3 rd
Elect
Table 1. Student team listing
The responsibilities of the team members varied among the six different competitions that the university participated in. Preparation for the competitions dated six months prior to departure (October 2010).
These preparations included designing and building a robot, implementing the model course for the robot, T-shirt design trials, designing branch website (used for the competition), practicing various engineering ethics cases and trial presentation of student Technical Paper. The team comprised of some of the faculty’s best ECE students willing to invest the extra time for preparation for the competitions yet adequately able to balance their school work load.
In the Ethics Paper Competition , Latania Morrison, Brent Richardson and Kimroy Bailey represented
UTech; they worked on a case study of a military missile malfunction that caused an explosion during transportation. The transportation mechanism which triggered the explosion was orchestrated by an electrical engineer. The case placed the competitors in the position of a young engineer who had to make a compromising decision against the interest of his company and investors but for the safety and welfare of the public who would be endangered if the production of the missile transport mechanism is continued. The student engineers were allocated 2 hours to prepare an in dept analysis of the case, providing grounds for every decision taken using the IEEE Code of Ethics. During this time they had to prepare a power point presentation and then had an 8 minute period to present their analysis of the case with a 4 minute question and answer section from judges and attendees.
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IEEE SoutheastCon Report 2011
The Software Competition included real world design problems and tested the competitors thinking ability, creativity, and programming skills. Two students from the School of Computing: Dean Jones and Tennison Dougherty along with an Electrical Engineering, computer minor student Osane
Lannaman participated in this competition. They were provided with the programming infrastructure to carry out the tasks required during the competition. Each Team had access to a computer without internet access and were required produce executable codes for each given task before proceeding to the next. The software competition is the longest of the six, which transpired for 7 hours without break.
Competitors had to eat while programming but had no opportunity to leave the competition room.
The T-Shirt Competition implored creative minds to design a T-Shirt expressing engineering ingenuity. The design concept and idea was done by Kimroy Bailey and the computer aided design was done by Jamaal Wilson, the design had to be engineering related. UTech’s entry in the student T-shirt competition noted, “The Future Is in Our Hands”. The logo size restriction prohibited the team from reaching the finals of the competition. Other SCIT students that provided support to the design are Evon
Binns and Xavier Chambers.
The Website competition required participating student branches to submit their website’s URL. The best branch website was chosen based on criteria such as organization, content etc. Grevon Smith led the website design team which also comprised of Dean Jones, Tennison Dougherty and Evon Smith with assistance from the SAPNA group. Please visit: http://utech-ieee-branch.somee.com
Student Paper competition. Undergraduate students were invited to submit papers on subjects of their choice. 60 percent of the judging for this competition is undertaken after universities submit the written portion of the Technical Paper. The technical papers that exhibited the highest degree of ingenuity are selected for presentation at the conference. UTech was among the top 8 university selected to present.
The presentation done by Kimroy Bailey titling ‘Benefits of Utilizing Offshore Wind Turbines as a
Primary Source of Renewable Energy Compared to its Onshore Counterpart’ was reviewed by the professionals in the selected fields. The technical articles are published in subsequent IEEE magazine after the conference.
Hardware competition (Robotics)
The student hardware competition focused on designing an autonomous robot to be deployed in response to natural disasters. The team comprised of: Odane Kentish, Durvan McKenzie, Jamaal
Wilson, Johniel White, Paul Lawrence, U-Shane Taylor, Osane Lannaman, Dean Jones, Tennison
Dougherty, Brent Richardson and Kimroy Bailey. The robot’s action should be triggered only by a start button, thereafter there should be absolutely no wireless communication or control of the robotic device.
The robot should comprise of sensors to make it intelligent enough to overcome obstacles, search for victims and report their status (live, unconscious or dead) and their given location both audibly along with a visual display. This competition is usually the major seller of the conference as it requires serious time and resource commitments. In the final analysis, innovation is truly born out of necessity. Some misunderstanding and communication challenges within the competition rules forced several teams to reengineer their robots on the day of the competition. For the UTech’s robot, this meant adding traction to the wheels to climb over obstacles and detect hazards. Several other modifications were tried to augment the original plan of going around the obstacles including chassis modifications to climb over obstacles as it would replicate the real world response to disaster. During the competition obstacles were strategically placed by judges, such that it blocked the entire pathway’s access to the victims at times.
The UTech team had to design and implement a navigation mechanism to go over these obstacles in order to report the victim’s condition. This evolution of the robot took place in the period of 23 hours.
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IEEE SoutheastCon Report 2011
The design team had to generate a navigation approach and only had a few hours to do so. After design is complete the mechanical and electrical team started implementing the proposed ideas while the programming team concentrated on developing the code to operate the relatively new robot with the desired changes of the design team.
Pictures and videos show students falling asleep yet refusing to desert the team but to offer support of any kind as the competition start time approached. The students worked 24hrs from 9:00am Friday morning to 8:00am competition time on Saturday non-stop and were not deterred by challenges or intimidated by any one. As the evolution of the robot reached its final stages, students from other universities watched as the new automated device showed full intent to compete after extensive challenges. It is evident that the true team spirit displayed cannot be overemphasized. The team experienced levels of motivation which led to representation at the highest level for Jamaica and the
Caribbean.
Excelling against All odds
Despite not being able to source the desired external funding from private organizations for travel, import the robotic parts and other expenses of this venture, UTech Jamaica was well recognized and represented in all 6 competitions against all odds. After all the competitions concluded, the awards banquet began.
• UTech was granted third place in the Technical Paper Competition.
• UTech was the only university to be awarded the “IEEE Regional Exemplary Student Branch
Award”. This award was given because the student branch conformed to IEEE Bylaws, have an active program and support IEEE goals.
• The university was also in the top five for the Ethics Paper Competition.
• On the lighter side the team was also mentioned for being the best “dressed university” of the evening and would have gotten an award for the latter if it did exist.
•
The hardware team left an indefinable mark on the minds of attendees and competitors at the hardware competition after exhibiting true engineering and displaying utmost resilience to redesign their robot after misinterpreting the competition rules. They were placed in the top 25 out of 40 for the competition and left with an experience second to none.
• Top six of 15 in the software, and top 3 in the website design
• UTech among top 3 Engineering Universities to enter all six competitions at SoutheastCon 2011 and gain two awards. Only eleven of forty competing universities received awards.
After the award ceremony the judges of the technical paper competition were eager to congratulate
Kimroy Bailey on his eloquence and the depth of his presentation. They continued to express their awe at the presentation compiled by the Ethics Paper Team and the accuracy at which they addressed each point. The team returned home on Monday March 21 at approximately 11:30 pm extremely proud of themselves with plans to make next year’s conference and even better one.
IEEE is dedicated to advancing technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity. The
IEEE SouthEastCon
TM
2011 was a tremendous success this year, when compared to last year where the university was represented by a three member team of Brent Richardson, Kimroy Bailey and Marlon
Mendez who received third place for T-Shirt design. The conference provided the opportunity to expand networks and advertise the country and university to countless students and professionals, leaving them with the desire of discovering the Island and possibly collaborating with UTech Faculty of engineering.
As UTech continues to embrace the IEEE vision, the partnership is geared at using it to propel the need
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IEEE SoutheastCon Report 2011 of creating quality engineers with standards equivalent to other top international engineering universities.
Finance and potential benefit to Sponsors
We have to highlight the immense personal sacrifices made by the students who gave of their time and made large financial commitments to make the country proud. We still have students with outstanding money from loans and actively remind potential sponsors that it’s not too late to provide support as we showcase this immense effort to Jamaica. Specifically, almost half of the students made financial sacrifices and put funds upfront to purchase their tickets while cognizant of the fact that refunds are not guaranteed. An overview of the income, expenses and outstanding amount is shown in the proceeding section. Potential benefits to sponsors include traditional media exposure by mentioning your company’s contribution whenever we are interviewed by any media house or paper publication. An all island exposure is also being planned by doing an engineering awareness tour with our robot.
Jamaica Section Bid Proposal for SoutheastCon 2015.
In 2009, the Jamaica Section was offered and accepted the invitation to bid for the opportunity to host
SouthEastCon 2015. Since then generous attention has been given to the bid proposal for this conference. The bid proposal was submitted prior to the start of SouthEastCon 2010. For more details on the Jamaica section, please visit the IEEE Jamaica Section web site at http://www.ewh.ieee.org/r3/jamaica
Jamaica hosted southeastcon in 2003 with a joint effort from the Jamaica section, UTech and UWI mona. The conference was a huge success and attracted several people to the event held in Ocho Rios.
Student Activities
The UTech Student Branch remains committed to the ideals of the IEEE. The branch will be hosting a student professional awareness conference and other activities shortly to follow up conference events.
Besides competitions, students participated in leadership training, workshops and learnt about other branch activities which they are eager to share. Students were exposed to IEEE technological advances at empowerment sessions. The Jamaica College effort must also be highlighted as the branch helped in mentoring the high school students and performance in there robot competition.
Conclusion
This experience has being very encouraging and I now ask how we can harness this energy to solve
Jamaica’s problems. Fine examples of cross faculty integration were forged and observed during the conference. The SCIT students commented on the tremendous opportunity re application of their software knowledge to solve real engineering problems. The challenge for next year’s competition involves bottling existing efforts, computer codes, documentations for robot, critically evaluating reasons for overall placements etc. We have to remove latency, increase fundraising efforts, seek sponsorship and order parts early. Fusing robotic projects into academic activity, major projects and existing curriculum is also a necessity to increase student involvement. Other immediate concerns are continuity of marvelous efforts displayed. This is being addressed as there has being involvement of second and first year students who have begun to show will, determination and enthusiasm for the projects. Jamaica’s future looks good with these bright engineers at the helm and UTech and Jamaica must be proud of the accomplishments made. We also have to note the increasing awareness of engineering ethics amongst this generation.
Robotics has several multidisciplinary challenges such as wheel traction, motor’s torque, aerodynamics, center of gravity etc. Perseverance to do their best and not being deterred by obstacles was shown
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IEEE SoutheastCon Report 2011 extensively and must be highlighted. The way forward should include mechanical engineering students making a contribution and extending the cross faculty integration and promoting multidisciplinary approach to problem solving.
The UTech Robot fought well and tried hard to overcome obstacles in the first round. In the second round a power problem occurred signaling end of run this time. Of note several other robots didn't leave the starting line and we are talking competitions with some of the finest institutions. The bottom line was an interpretation of competition rules which affected several teams. Other faculty and students were impressed with our fundamental sensor designs which rivaled complex and expensive solutions. At the end of the day not having these restrictions the sky is the limit as to what our robot can do. The team leader’s energy can't underscore enough the importance of a good leader, one who leads by example.
The solution which emerged from Jamaica over six months of work on the island and a further 24 hours of reengineering after refusing to give up when rules were confirmed competed notably and left an indelible mark on the minds of students, lecturers, judges and competitors at the conference. The local
NBC TV station, WSMV, provided coverage of the finals of the robot competition on the evening news.
The IEEE governing body acknowledges universities in the hardware competitions as exceptional tertiary institutions, producing students that are industrially prepared and capable of the creative ingenuity necessary to thrive and be an asset to society’s development.
Acknowledgement
Let us take this opportunity to thank the Jamaica Section Officers (Daniel Tulloch-Reid and Wilfred
Roberts), Student Branch Chair, Branch Counselor and members of the IEEE Jamaica Section for their support. Special thanks to the members of Region 3 ExCom who have always been supportive of the activities of the Jamaica Section. Special thanks to our sponsors who provided support for this effort.
Companies including Seprod, petrojam, American airlines and Wigton Wind farm. UTech acknowledges the team Jamaal Wilson, U-Shane Taylor, Johniel White, Durvan McKenzie, Brent Richardson, Latania
Morrison, Odane Kentish, Evon Williams, Dean Jones, Tennison Dougherty, Osane Lannaman, Paul
Lawrence, Cheyenne Powell, Melesa Harrison, the team leader Kimroy Bailey and the team advisor Dr.
Dave D Muir performance and all of the other IEEE members for their contribution prior to the IEEE
SouthEastCon 2011. A number of persons influenced the success of the technical paper including: Mr.
Martin Henry, staff members from the Wigton Wind Farm, The Mona Informatics Institute, The
Meteorological Institute of Jamaica, The Information and Co-operate Affairs department (ICA) and the
Center of Excellence for Renewable Energy (CERE) at PCJ. The efforts of Mr.Hewitt student branch counselor, Dwight Reid, Dwayne Hibbert, Dr Damith, SAPNA group, Mr Campbell for organizing
SAPNA, Mathew Bryan, Darron Fraser, Mr Small, Dean Delisser, Dr. Chambers, Admin staff, Faculty administrator, faculty office and other faculty members who gave of their time, allocation in their modules, and technical advice and expertise. Technicians Ewan Pitter, Mr. Holgate etc Mr Perry from
FMD, other Beng 3e students, upcoming student IEEE members, all those who gave moral and physical support. Leotis Buchanan for LCD, Mark Stokes for onsite help with registrations, the work of the student conferene chair Dr. Hanneman and other region 3 members who supported the UTech team.
Report Prepared by UTech Student Branch Chair and IEEE Member:
Kimroy Bailey kbailey@ieee.org
Tel: (876)-834-5971
URLs: http://www.ewh.ieee.org/r3/jamaica www.southeastcon.org
Dave D Muir dmuir@utech.edu.jm
Tel: (876) 872-1162
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IEEE SoutheastCon Report 2011
Sample Pictures of SoutheastCon 2011 before attending, during the conference and after the event;
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