Team Michigan, consisting of Robotics Technology Consortium (RTC) members the University of Michigan and SoarTech, took first place in the Multi Autonomous Ground-robotic International Challenge (MAGIC) 2010 recently held in Australia. SoarTech supported the team by developing SHADE (Spatial Highlights for Analysis of Data and Events), a 3D situational awareness display that notified operators of interesting and critical events while also giving an overview of the space the robots were exploring. The team’s 14 autonomous robots built by University of Michigan students mostly from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, won a $750,000 grant for finishing in first place out of five teams in the final round of the contest.
Team Michigan (Edwin Olson, Robert Goeddel, Pradeep Ranganathan, Andrew Richardson, Ryan Morton, Mihai Bulic, Johannes Strom, Andrew Dallas- VP, Soar Technology)
MAGIC, which stands for Multi Autonomous Ground-robotic International Challenge, initially involved 23 teams. The competition took place in stages over more than two years and was sponsored by the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command’s Tank Automotive Research Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) and its Australian counterpart.
Congratulations to RTC Board Member Andy Dallas for helping guide the Team Michigan to victory which reaffirms the reputation of Michigan companies and organizations as leaders in the creation of innovative ground robotics technology.
