Students Invited to Participate in Robotics Competition at the 2009 Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference
Letters of Intent Due July 30, 2008 http://www.tapiaconference.org/2009
For Immediate Release
July 26, 2008
Media contact: Ann Redelfs, ann@redelfs.us, 218.734.3216
ORTLAND, OR--Students interested in building and programming robots to operate in virtual and real-world environments are invited to participate in the Robotics Competition at the next Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference, April 1-4, 2009, in Portland, Oregon.
The Robotics Competition is focused on a search and rescue task and includes simulated and physical disaster environments with a goal of identifying and locating objects. The first stage of the competition involves building a software solution for a simulator and the second stage requires migration to a robot equipped with touch and camera sensors on site at the conference. Letters of intent to participate in the Robotics Competition are due July 30, 2008 at http://www.cs.duke.edu/csed/tapia09; this site also includes details about the competition, requirements, and resources. Teams that register will receive a DVD that includes the development environment for the qualification stage.
This is the second Robotics Competition at a Tapia Celebration. The first, in 2007, saw teams from the United States and Canada compete in a standing-room-only environment. "The excitement surrounding the Robotics Competition at the last Tapia Celebration in Orlando, Florida was terrific," said Jeffrey Forbes of Duke University, Robotics Competition co-chair for 2007 and 2009. "The student teams and their robots were highly visible throughout the competition and the conference itself. It's a great opportunity for students to really test their skills and show their ability to think on their feet." The Robotics Competition winner in 2007 was the HMC Escher team from Harvey Mudd College in California, and the award for Robotics Technical Achievement went to the Nexus 6 team from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia.
The 2009 Tapia Celebration conference is also accepting proposals until September 5, 2008 for papers, panels, workshops, Birds-of-a-Feather sessions, posters, and the Doctoral Consortium. The conference theme of "Intellect, Initiative, Insight, and Innovation" should be considered in submissions that may cover any area of computing, computational math and science, and diversity issues in these disciplines.
Important Dates for the Robotics Competition
July 30, 2008 - Letters of intent deadline
September 5, 2008 - Checkpoint materials submission deadline
November 7, 2008 - Team information deadline for camera-ready copy, photos, bios, abstract, and simulation/design plans
December 12, 2008 - Notification of qualification
Faculty and students with questions are welcome to write to robotics@tapiaconference.org.
About the Tapia Conference
The Tapia conference series is organized by the Coalition to Diversify Computing and sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery in cooperation with the Computing Research Association. It honors the significant contributions of Dr. Richard A. Tapia, University Professor and Maxfield-Oshman Professor in Engineering in the Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics and Director of the Center for Excellence and Equity in Education at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He is internationally known for his research in computational and mathematical sciences and is a national leader in education and outreach programs. Tapia has authored or co-authored two books and more than 100 mathematical research papers.
