News Release

Senior project turns into major prize winner

April 15, 2008

The senior project developed by four Penn State Harrisburg Electrical Engineering Technology students has turned into a major prize winner.

The students and their project walked away with first place honors in the annual “Micromouse” competition held at the annual Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Region 2 Student Activities Conference.

The conference and associated student competitions drew teams from 17 colleges and universities in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. It was held at Penn College of Technology in Williamsport April 4 to 6.

The winning Penn State Harrisburg micromouse team consisted of Neseth C. Kong (Lancaster), Curtis M. Armer (Lancaster), and Andrew T. Zambell (Palmyra). Fellow student Ken Leister (Quakertown) was part of the student project team, but did not participate in the Region 2 competition. In addition, the Penn State Harrisburg duo of John P. Kane and Brian E. Bell Jr. took third place honors in the same competition.

Kong explains, “Micromouse is an event where small robot mice solve a maze. The mice are completely autonomous robots that must find their way from a predetermined starting position to the central area of the maze unaided. The mouse needs to keep track of where it is, discover walls as it explores, map out the maze, and detect when it has reached that goal.”

He continues, “Having reached that goal, the mouse will typically perform additional searches of the maze until it has found an optimal route from the start to the center. Once the optimal route has been found, the mouse will run that route in the shortest time possible.”

Another Penn State Harrisburg team consisting of Justin D. Warner of Harrisburg and Peter E. Miles of Downingtown placed third in the Project Showcase competition.

Other Penn State Harrisburg participants in the competitions were:

• Ethics Competition – Levi Clouser, Manan H. Mehta, and James Spencer Stahl Jr.
• Brown Bag Competition (Team 1) –  Rayyan Saud Alghni, Anthony E. Bosket, William Austin Neary, and Justin Dennis Pickel.
• Brown Bag Competition (Team 2) – Robert J. Kendrick and Jatin M. Patel along with two students from University Park.