“SENER’s Bot Talent” robotics challenge begins at UC3M

The UC3M-SENER Aerospace chair ST3LLAR is coordinating the participation of a group of UC3M master students in the first edition of “SENER’s Bot Talent” that has just started this March. This competition has been established by SENER’s engineering and technology group together with the Fundación SENER to enable student teams from 5 Spanish universities to apply their skills as engineers to solve various problems related to the guidance, navigation, and control of an autonomous terrestrial vehicle in a real environment, see Figure 1. Each team is provided with the necessary components to assemble the rover and must then develop and implement appropriate schemes and solutions to provide the rover with autonomy to face a series of tests in July at SENER’s facilities.

The UC3M student team ROVER.T.O is composed by 8 students from the masters in Space Engineering (MISE), Aeronautical Engineering (MAE), and Industrial Engineering (MIENG): Martí Negre García, Andrés Infante Adrián, David Laborda Izquierdo, Manuel Ramos López-Contreras, Edith Riera Sicilia, Elena Flores Calcerrada, Ismael El Khattabi Vilchez, and Hubert Roman Wasik Andreasik. The work of the team is supported by SENER technical staff and by members of the ST3LLAR chair from three departments: profs. Andrés Marcos (Aerospace Engineering), Víctor Gil (Signal Theory and Communications) and Javier Muñoz (Computer Science and Engineering).

The student team visited SENER Aerospace & Defence facilities in Tres Cantos (Madrid) on 7th of March, Figure 2, to be introduced to the organizing staff and the robotic challenge, as well as to pick up the first electrical/electronic components of the bot. The students report their enthusiasm for participating in this experience that will allow them to be mentored by professionals in industry, apply their skills in a practical environment, and expand their engineering knowledge. The students and the ST3LLAR chair would like to thank SENER for opening its doors to them, and special thanks to Jaime Bravo for organizing the visit and taking the time to show them the facilities.