Just like “The Jetsons,”
Brainy Engineers Build Robots of the Future
Michael Folcik ’09, left, president of the Robotics Club,
with vice president Michael Monico ’09.
Robots are like people. They are skeletons linked by chains, which can be likened to bones. Although they literally lack flesh, blood and – perhaps most important – brains, those deficiencies are compensated fully by the University’s Robotics Club. As any Robotics Club meeting will prove, there are plenty of brains in attendance.

This semester, the club is designing and building from scratch a robotic fuel-cell lawn mower equipped with GPS. The beauty of the mower, unlike robotic vacuum cleaners that zip erratically through living rooms like dogs trying to break through invisible fences, is that the GPS orders the robot to mow in straight lines. Waves are fine in the ocean, but lawns – or rather, their owners - demand straight lines.

Such projects are the focus of research for robotics clubs at some of the nation’s most prestigious universities. For Michael Folcik ’09 Computer Engineering, who started UNH’s club in 2005 after years of tinkering with Lego robots and electronics, the club’s growing popularity is a testament to the talent on the University of New Haven campus.

“We are working on a project that only the most advanced and established robotics programs in the country would even consider,” Folcik says. “I want this project to stand out in the realm of robotics.”

He and Michael Monico ’09 Mechanical Engineering, the club's vice president, have been working on robotics projects since the club’s inception. Together they designed and built a firefighting robot for a 2006 robotics competition held at Trinity College. Applying theory to practice in Robotics Club, they believe, gives them a leg up.

“You can certainly sit in class and do calculations and solve problems, but when we're sitting down and working in Robotics Club, there’s no information being given to us,” Monico says. “It’s pulling on what we’ve learned to complete a project as intricate as this one.”

Folcik agrees. “We really do get to apply the things we've learned in class," he says, "and it has made everybody involved more well-rounded as engineers.”

Racing To Make a Concrete Canoe
Matt Burke '09, Jesse McIntyre '09 and Chris Stankus '09
in the body of their soon-to-be-concrete canoe.
In preparation for a national competition, students from UNH’s Concrete Canoe Club are in the midst of building a canoe that uses all the traditional components: carefully drawn-up plans, mechanical engineering skills and wood; but with one small addition: concrete. The challenge is enough to sink anyone’s boat, but the rewards are plentiful. The students learn to work as a team, manage a budget, cope with a tight schedule, design, analyze, solve and more.

One afternoon recently, four civil engineering students, Luke Clunan ’10, Chris Stankus ’09, Matt Burke ’09 and Jesse McIntyre ’09, worked on the bones of the canoe on the lower level of Buckman Hall. “It will float,” said Stankus.

According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, boat builders have been using concrete in floating vessels since 1848. The first documented case was that year, when Joseph Louis Lambot began building concrete boats for use on his estate in France. Some student chapters of the ASCE date their intramural concrete canoe races to the 1960s. The University of Illinois-Urbana and the University of California-Berkeley both claim to have held the first ASCE regional competitions in the early 1970s. Since then, students have advanced the art and science of the concrete canoe to new heights of hydrodynamic design.

For the first time since the race’s inception, the National Concrete Canoe Competition will be held outside the geographic United States, in Montreal, from June 19-June 21. (Remember your passports!)

Innovation Drives Student Research Projects: Professors worked with student researchers this summer on a variety of projects.