Gabriel Shepherd, of Proctorville, is a member of Cedarville University’s winning robotics team.
Released Sunday, July 21, 2024 at 5:00 AM
Front row: Dr. Cole, Josiah Mulligan, Sarah Haple, Isaac Cresswell Second row: Ethan Wilson, Christian Di Spigna, Bryant Buell, Albie Morrison, Bailey LaRue Back row: Gabriel Shepherd, Brady Schick, Alan Golden, Jacob Posea (team captain), Nee Noi Hanson Notty Not pictured: Alex Bishop, Timothy Deibler, Daniel Dukundane, Logan Hershberger, Nicholas Stokes, Miles Young
CEDARVILLE — As the defending champions of the American Association for Engineering Education’s robotics competition, a team of Cedarville University engineering students competed for the title at the 2024 competition in Portland, Oregon, and emerged victorious.
The Cedarville team, which included Gabriel Shepherd of Proctorville, dominated the competition, taking first place in presentation, testing and overall score.
The Autonomous Robotics Competition is an event held at the ASEE Annual Conference where teams of first- and second-year students compete to design, build, and build autonomous robots that meet strict dimensional constraints and other criteria within a $500 budget.
Under the guidance of Dr. Clint Cole, senior professor of computer engineering, Cedarville students have used the opportunity to expand their learning and test their knowledge with other undergraduate students. Dr. Cole first learned about the event while serving as an ASEE member and realized the potential the experience could offer Cedarville students. “Cedarville has a lot of competitions related to senior years, such as the Senior Design Project,” Dr. Cole said. “However, we have many students who have participated in programs and tournaments in high school and are looking forward to a chance to try out before their senior year. The ASEE competition provides that opportunity – it helps them prepare for the more challenging aspects of their major and sharpens their skills as future engineers.”
Though Cole has seen Cedarville teams win the competition multiple times, he emphasizes that the school’s greatest strength isn’t the competition itself, but teaching competitors the ability to work together. Often the first college-level project involving team members, the project pushes students to their limits and asks them to work side-by-side in different project groups, such as a mechanical design group, a testing team and a programming team. This team-wide structure teaches competitors the value of teamwork and relying on others in an organization to make a project a success, something Cole argues is invaluable.
“Competitions like this highlight the practical side of engineering: at the end of the day, we have to get the project done, and we can do it,” Cole said. “As engineers, we often dream big and big, but sometimes we have to stop dreaming and start making our dreams a reality. The first step in that process is believing we can do it, and the educational opportunity to do that is the competition’s greatest strength.”
