Wesley Williams

Pushkar Sathe has taken a job in Japan working with the company that makes the JMAG magnetics software that we use in our magnetic gear research.  Congrats and best of luck to Pushkar!

Our September meeting will be a joint one with the student chapter at UNC-Charlotte. The date is September 20 and the time is 6:30 PM. Jon Tedesco, of Keyence, will be doing a presentation on the topic of surface analysis. He will have several pieces of equipment to demonstrate to us.

We will be serving food at this event, so an RSVP is required by September 15. Log onto our website to register or email annedixon@dixoneng.com to RSVP. Hope to see all of you there.

Anne Dixon

Hello wonderful volunteers,

I hope everyone is having a great summer. As some of you might know, the NC Off-Season FRC event known as THOR (Thundering Herd Of Robots) is coming soon, and this year there will be two separate competitions. THOR 1 will be held on August 5th this year. The location is the Jones Center at UNC-Pembroke, Pembroke, NC 28372. And we are looking for volunteers!!!! We need people for the following positions:

Scorekeepers
Referees
Field Reset
Queueing
MC
Game Announcer
Safety Glass Table

The schedule for the event is:

General Schedule (subject to change!!):
Friday, Aug 4 – Set-up Facility
Saturday, Aug 5
7:00 am – Volunteer Check-In
7:30 am – Team Check-In
9:00 am – Opening Ceremony
9:30 am – Matches Begin
6:00 pm – Awards Ceremony
7:00 pm – Load-out

If you are interested in volunteering please use to following link and register

https://goo.gl/forms/i2hHzRi0Z8bXfznk2

Beth Davis
THOR 1 Volunteer Coordinator

Students took a break from their research to celebrate recent successes at Dr Williams house with some food and gaming:

-Alzarrio successfully defended his Master’s thesis

-Pushkar received a job offer from JMAG in Japan

-Kang received a Hydropower scholarship

-Josh and Cameron are each moving into new houses

-Matt survived a short lived attempt at human flight

On the gaming front, it was a strong night for the significant others, with Ping winning at Pairs and Nicole showing unexpected murderous prowess at Kill Dr Lucky.

My colleagues Dr. Aidan Browne and Jim Conrad recently had their paper on robotics education efforts published in IEEE Access.  This work spanned multiple years and was supported by the Department of Labor Mission Critical Operations Grant.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7890432/

Aidan and Jim also had success at this year’s NASA Robotic Mining Competition, where the team earned the 3rd place award for automation.

Cameron Nye graduated with his MS in Applied Energy and Electromechanical Systems this May.  Cameron was a long time research assistant on the Mission Critical Operations project funded by the Department of Labor, where his contributions earned him Graduate Research Assistant of the year for the AEEMS program this year.  Cameron has taken a job with a Johnson Controls as a Control Engineer here in Charlotte.