Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering domination never felt so good.
Jace Lemp and his Intelligent Systems Engineering teammates Brendan Cox, Andrew Borgsdorf, Joshua Pikner, Joseph Thompson, Samantha Woodward, Jackson Ermi, Andrew Meighan, Caeden Taylor, Matthew Widjaja, Loga Riddle, Matthew Dempsey and Paul Coen set the tone during their blitz-all-comers victory at the recent Defend the Republic competition at George Mason University in Virginia.
Their combination of research, technical prowess, competitiveness and outside-the-box thinking overwhelmed Arizona State University, Baylor University, Georgia Tech, George Mason University and Lehigh University.
“It was so satisfying,” Lemp said. “Going undefeated was very exciting.”
The Luddy School team won the six-game tournament with a record 276 total points; it beat Baylor 90-20 in the championship game, and won the “Golden Goal Free-for-All” event.
“Their performance was nothing short of phenomenal,” said Or Dantsker, assistant professor of Intelligent Systems Engineering. “It was a commanding performance that earned admiration from competitors and organizers alike.”
Add an impressive showing in the recent Artificial Intelligence Maritime Maneuver Indiana Collegiate Challenge with a victory in the Project Presentation Category and a fourth-place finish in the autonomous course challenge and you have what Or called an impressive display of “excellence, creativity, resilience and outstanding results.”
Those team members were Eli Smith, Will Varner, Brendan Cox, Jackson Ermi, Samantha Woodward, Caeden Taylor, Gautam Hari, Sam Huser, Kushagra Gupta, and Carter Mullenix. Paul Coen, Or Dantsker, and David Crandall, Luddy Professor of Computer Science and director of Luddy Artificial Intelligence Center, were mentors.
“We impressed the judges with the innovation and technical depth of our design and strategy,” Dantsker said. “It’s amazing to see what our Luddy students can achieve.”
*****
In Defend the Republic, teams battled each other in a form of robotic quidditch (think Harry Potter) with blimps performing full autonomy, vision-processing, control and propulsion within a weight budget that could be lifted by helium balloons.
It featured blimps that scored, defended and attacked. Dantsker said the Luddy team – composed of students from his fall “Autonomous Sports” class and the Aerial Robotics Club – had dramatically revised and refined its designs from earlier competitions while also innovating in transportability, deploy-ability and modularity. During games, they could convert vehicles from scoring to defensive, and back again.
Dantsker said this was part of his “Aerospace Systems Lab” designed to quickly develop autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles capable of thriving in the field.
“The winning strategy involved superior hardware-software integration, minimalistic and highly effective hardware design, high flexibility in gameplay strategy, and the team’s great ability to adapt and improvise to changing conditions,” he said.
Lemp said competitors were evolving and improving their equipment and strategies. Luddy team research allowed it to anticipate what opponents would do and how to counter it.
He said designing cutting-edge blimps and drones, and transporting them to George Mason University were big challenges. He built the drones and designed a “pack-flat system” so that all 10 blimps fit into one minivan.
That gave Luddy a competitive edge. Blimps with a net attached to grab balloons and score, could be outfitted with hooks dangling from Kevlar string to grab competitors and keep them away from goals.
Against Lehigh, the Luddy team took out a couple of their vehicles, “and they didn’t have the resources to rebuild,” Lemp said.
In the final against Baylor, Lemp said, “we went in with a good strategy going in with our attack vehicles and looming over them during the manual phases when they traditionally try to score the most points.”
The result was that 90-20 score.
“They showed what our students are capable of on a national stage,” Dantsker said.
*****
For the Artificial Intelligence Maritime Maneuver Indiana Collegiate Challenge, Luddy assembled a team of Intelligent Systems Engineering, Computer Science and Data Science students. The five-team competition involved a technical design report, a project presentation and a course challenge composed of nine tasks.
Dantsker said the Luddy team took a different approach from the other schools by developing a low-profile, 14-foot 2,600-pound boat with submersion capabilities. The team also built a “sub-scale” three-foot, 150-pound boat. That gave it a low-profile vehicle that could partially submerge and avoid detection in one of the tasks.
“It was a bold and innovative strategy,” Dantsker said. “The team’s ingenuity stood out, and they received high praise from the judges, leadership and representatives from NSWC Crane, and other competitors.”
The competition took place at Lake James near Angola in northern Indiana. Caeden Taylor said the course challenge was “like an obstacle course for boats.”
“Ideally it would have autonomous control,” Taylor said. “No human intervention through the entire course.”
While the Luddy team didn’t win the course challenge, he added, “I would like to note we were able to complete all nine challenges in a single run. The other teams took multiple runs or didn’t get all the points for all of these things.”
Taylor said working with boat-based systems is difficult. It took five people to move the 2,600-pound full-scale vehicle.
“Every time we went to Lake Griffy for a test,” he said, “it would take a full workday. We needed to make sure we made the most of it. It’s really challenging to test in these environments.”
Taylor said the reward in participating in these events can’t be overstated.
“It brings together a strong team and culture. The feeling of accomplishment is unlike anything I’ve had at Luddy. A lot of times, the (academic) work is a little more focused on getting an end-result product that is good, and then move on to the next. With competitions like this, you are forever chasing better strategy, honing on this process where everything is constantly changing.
“Next year, everyone’s boats will be different. I hope (the next Luddy team) feels inspired by what we did. Our team was inspired by previous work.”
That work, Dantsker said, and the students behind it is what sets the Luddy School apart.
“Their creativity made a strong impression. We’re excited to build on this momentum for even better results next year.”
