Issue 8F December 1.qxp 11/24/2008 11:59 AM...
4
POP QUIZ COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING • UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY engineeringNews Stanley Luk, BioE junior “You just pulled an all-nighter.” Elysha Anderson, CEE grad student “You relate health insurance to operating systems.” Angel Lam, IEOR sophomore “People ask you what your major is, you tell them, and they go, ‘Why?’” Andrew Dussault, MSE freshman “You see Hearst Mining Circle more than four times per day.” Driven to win hen teammates phoned Ashik Manandhar (B.S.’08 EECS) from Davis last May to report how their car did in its race, they delivered bad news. They had designed the small-scale electric car to drive itself around a preset, wired path that curves, jogs horizontally and loops back on itself. This was Natcar, a yearly competition between 20 or so college teams that race their autonomous radio-controlled cars for the fastest time, a con- test sponsored by National Semiconductor and hosted at UC Davis. It was May 23, the final day of competition, and the pressure was on. Berkeley’s teams were jockeying for first, gunning to capture the title FASTER AND SMARTER: From left, Larry Van Pham Ly, Trung Tran and Ashik Manandhar display their winning car. You know you’re an engineering major when... Continued on page 2 DECEMBER 1, 2008 VOL. 79, NO. 8F RACHEL SHAFER PHOTO ANDREW MA PHOTO DOZER SKILLS: CEE senior Charlotte Wong receives instruction on how to drive a Caterpillar D4H bulldozer from operator Joe Shryock. Wong then drove the 22,000-pound machine solo. She and fellow stu- dents from CE 177, Foundation Engineering Design, were on a volun- tary field trip earlier this semester with CEE guest lecturer Richard Short to try their hand at operating earthwork equipment. “I want them to know what this equipment feels like, the horsepower of it, so it’s not abstract terminology,” says Short. SHE’S READY TO RUMBLE A look back at how Cal recaptured the Natcar title W
Transcript of Issue 8F December 1.qxp 11/24/2008 11:59 AM...
engineeringNews
<of note>
4 engineeringNews
POPQUIZ
COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING • UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
engineeringNews
10394.qxd:Layout 1 8/7/07 6:07 PM Page 1
Congratulations to EECS graduate students AshimaAtul, Erika Chin, David Poll, Henry Cook, Seth Horriganand Joshua Paul! They are among 50 students honored asthe Siebel Foundation’s 2009 Siebel Scholars. Pictured top,from left, are Dean Shankar Sastry, Cook, Horrigan, Chinand EECS professor Costas Spanos. Pictured bottom, fromleft, are Paul, Atul and EECS professor Edward Lee.
Published biweekly on Thursdays during the academic year bythe Engineering Marketing and Communications Office, Collegeof Engineering, University of California, Berkeley. Copy deadlineis 4:00 p.m. on the Monday preceding publication.
Rachel Shafermanaging editor and writer
Megan Mansell Williamsreporter
S. Shankar Sastrydean
Karen Rhodesexecutive director, marketing and communications
Professor Fearing credits the suc-cess to highly motivated students,GSI Peterson’s expertise and anextensive testing period thatallowed teams to identify bugs andimprove performance.
“The system is limitedby its weakest compo-nent, which could bea mechanical item,an electrical connec-tor, a circuit, a sen-sor or an algorithm,”Fearing explains.“Students get a chanceto work on all levels ofdesign, and we have enoughtime at the end of the semester thatthese designs can really be provenand improved.”
So what was Manandhar, Tranand Van Pham Ly’s secret to win-ning? There were several. They con-sulted with record-holder RickMann. They used their own fundsto buy a new chassis (actually two),replacing the older, heavier onethey’d inherited from a previousteam. They used a servo motor thatoffered finer, more sophisticatedcontrol. (“A regular DC motor issort of boring,” says Tran.) Theydesigned the car so it would “learn”
the track as it made its initial run,optimizing later runs to minimizedrift on the curves and maximizespeed on the straightaways. Theyinstalled a wireless Bluetooth con-
nection in the car so prob-lems could be debugged
as they occurred inreal time, makingtesting highly effi-cient. They dividedup areas of respon-sibility and gave
each other freedomto invent and push
the car’s physical limits.Above all, they kept their
sense of humor.“It was a good time,” says
Manandhar.
University of California, BerkeleyEngineering News312 McLaughlin HallBerkeley, California 94720-1704Phone: 510 642.5857Fax: 510 643.8882
www.coe.berkeley.edu/news-center/publications/engineering-news
DECEMBER 1, 2008
JAYNE
ANDERSON
PHOTOS
“My only disappointment
was that we didn’tset a new speed
record.”
SUDOKUEnter digits from 1 to 9into the blank spaces. Everyrow must contain one ofeach digit. So must everycolumn, as must every 3x3square.The answer willappear in the next issue.
Driven to win the Natcar contestContinued from page 2
Want to know more detailsabout Natcar? Go towww.ece.ucdavis.edu/natcar/. For informationabout EE 192, visit thecourse website athttp://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~ee192/archives.html
Issue 8F December 1.qxp 11/24/2008 11:59 AM Page 1
Stanley Luk, BioE junior
“You just pulled anall-nighter.”
Elysha Anderson,CEE grad student“You relate health
insurance tooperating systems.”
Angel Lam, IEOR sophomore
“People ask youwhat your major is,you tell them, andthey go, ‘Why?’”
Andrew Dussault,MSE freshman
“You see Hearst MiningCircle more than four
times per day.”
Driven to win
hen teammates phoned Ashik Manandhar(B.S.’08 EECS) from Davis last May to
report how their car did in its race, they deliveredbad news.
They had designed the small-scale electric carto drive itself around a preset, wired path thatcurves, jogs horizontally and loops back on itself.This was Natcar, a yearly competition between 20or so college teams that race their autonomousradio-controlled cars for the fastest time, a con-test sponsored by National Semiconductor andhosted at UC Davis.
It was May 23, the final day of competition,and the pressure was on. Berkeley’s teams werejockeying for first, gunning to capture the title
FASTER ANDSMARTER:From left,Larry VanPham Ly,Trung Tranand AshikManandhar display theirwinning car.
Youknow you’re
an engineering
majorwhen...
Continued on page 2
DECEMBER 1, 2008 VOL. 79, NO. 8F
RACHELSHAFER
PHOTO
ANDREW
MA
PHOTO
DOZER SKILLS: CEE senior Charlotte Wong receives instruction on
how to drive a Caterpillar D4H bulldozer from operator Joe Shryock.
Wong then drove the 22,000-pound machine solo. She and fellow stu-
dents from CE 177, Foundation Engineering Design, were on a volun-
tary field trip earlier this semester with CEE guest lecturer Richard
Short to try their hand at operating earthwork equipment. “I want
them to know what this equipment feels like, the horsepower of it, so
it’s not abstract terminology,” says Short.
SHE’S READY TO RUMBLE
A look back at how Cal recaptured theNatcar title
W
Issue 8F December 1.qxp 11/24/2008 11:59 AM Page 2
3engineeringNews
Get the complete College calendar atwww.coe.berkeley.edu/events.
2 engineeringNews
<announcements>10394.qxd:Layout 1 8/7/07 6:07 PM Page 3
after ceding it to UC Davis in 2007. (Prior tothat, Berkeley had won five years in a row.)The teams had recently completed EE 192,Mechatronics Design Lab, a capstone designcourse taught by EECS professor RonFearing. Under the guidance of Fearing andGSI Kevin Peterson, the students had dedi-cated their spring semester to building fast,reliable cars that could win the Natcar com-petition. In the process, they drew on theirknowledge of circuits, signal processing, con-trol and software to create a working robot.
Manandhar’s team alone poured hoursand hours into the design and redesign.They shopped for parts, constructed the car,tweaked systems and tested and tested (but
not so much as towear the car
down).Finally, aweek beforethe competi-
tion, theymade a radical and
risky decision to swap outthe entire chassis for a different one andbuild the whole car again from scratch.Why? To improve its performance.
But their luck didn’t hold, the teamreported. During one of its runs around thetrack, the car went haywire, they toldManandhar, and drove itself into a wall.Totaled. Manandhar, who couldn’t attendthe competition, finished the call andhung up. “Oh, I was bummed,” he recalls.
Then his teammates called back. Ha, ha! They’d won the competition.“It was awesome,” says teammate Trung
Tran, an EECS senior, referring mainly to thewin, but also to the practical joke they hadpulled off. (Incidentally, the three thought itwould be funny to name their car “OffTrack” at the beginning of the project.)
“Hearing that we won was very nice,” saysManandhar, grinning. “Finally.”
“My only disappointment was that wedidn’t set a new speed record,” adds EECSsenior Larry Van Pham Ly, referring to theirwinning time of 30.61 seconds, or 9.26 feetper second. (The record of 9.86 feet per sec-ond, set in 2006, is held by Robert Gregg,John Breneman and Rick Mann, now allBerkeley alumni.)
Cal’s ambition translated into impressiveresults. Berkeley swept the competition, cap-turing first through sixth places. The closestrival, a UC Davis team, took seventh.
Driven to winContinued from page 1
DECEMBER 1, 2008
ith graduation just six monthsaway, EECS senior Willis Lin is
applying for jobs, and that got himthinking about the value of his BerkeleyEngineering degree. Recently, he made agift to the college to support its sterlingreputation.
Lin donated to the 2009 EngineeringSenior Gift Campaign, which aims toraise $10,000 from 50 percent of thesenior class to support the college’smission to provide the best engineeringeducation in the world. The campaign,launched October 27 and part of thelarger “Campaign for Berkeley,” gener-ates funding to sustain programs andactivities that enrich the undergraduateexperience.
Donations like Lin’s are critical. Thecollege, despite its public university sta-tus, receives only one-third of its oper-ating budget from the state government(that includes student fees). The futurevalue of a Berkeley Engineering degreerests on alumni and other individualswho are willing to support its upkeep.
“It seems to be a built-in culture atprivate schools like Stanford whereolder alumni give, and that tradition ispassed on to younger alumni,” Linobserves. “We need to be doing this.I’ve had some friends complain abouthow old some piece of classroomequipment is, but if you don’t giveback, you can’t complain.”
Everyone who donates will receive
a small appreciation gift from the col-lege and their names will be published inthe college’s annual report and otherpublications. In addition, every studentwho makes a gift of $35 or more andpledges to make an equal gift over thenext three years will receive a compli-mentary Berkeley Engineering Alumnilicense plate frame. It’s the college’s wayof saying thanks for your extra support.To make a gift, visit the website below.
The Class of 2009 is also looking forstudent volunteers to join its leadershipcommittee. For more information,get in touch with Tara McCulloch [email protected].
How much do you valueyour degree? RACHEL
SHAFERPHOTO
BEARS WHO SHARE: ”You can’t get a bettereducation anywhere else,” Willis Lin says,explaining why he was motivated to donateto the Engineering Senior Gift Campaign.
www.coe.berkeley.edu/seniorgiftContinued on page 4
W
Issue 8F December 1.qxp 11/24/2008 12:00 PM Page 3
Green innovation lectureUC Davis associate professor Andrew Hargadon will deliver a talkentitled “The Networks of (Green) Innovation” on WEDNESDAY,DECEMBER 3, at noon in 290 Hearst Memorial Mining Building.The event, part of the CITRIS Research Exchange at UC Berkeley, isfree and open to the public. For more information, go towww.citris-uc.org/events/research_exchanges.
December gradsCongratulations on your upcoming graduation from BerkeleyEngineering, and welcome to the alumni community! We’d like tohonor your success at a festive chocolate fondue and champagnereception. Join your classmates, faculty and college staff in theBetty and Gordon Moore Lobby of Hearst Memorial MiningBuilding at 5 p.m. Wednesday, December 10. Send an e-mail [email protected] before FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5, to RSVP andreserve your special gift.
What do you like about your job?I love new gadgets and technological innova-tions; working with inventors exposes me tothe latest developments out there. It’s espe-cially gratifying to see the new products thatI helped get patents for, whether I’m at thesupermarket or watching commercials onTV. Another great thing about my job is thatmost of the attorneys here have engineeringor science degrees so I feel comfortable inmy peer group.
Tinker DayEngineers and non-engineers are invited to Tinker Day, whichtakes place every Friday from 2 to 5 p.m. in the north foyer ofHesse Hall. Come tinker on your projects or learn new tinkeringskills. For information, e-mail Romy at [email protected].
Win a $100 Best Buy gift cardTake a short survey about Engineering News, and you’ll automati-cally be entered into a raffle drawing for the $100 Best Buy giftcard. Surveys can be found in the waiting area of 308 McLaughlinHall, or take it online at www.coe.berkeley.edu/news-center/publica-tions/engineering-news/take-our-survey.html. We want to improvethis publication to better serve you!
WITH MSE/NE ALUM PETER HSUEH
After graduating from Cal, Peter Hsueh (B.S.’93 MSE/NE) earned a master’s degree in
health physics from Texas A&M. He worked for two years at Isotope Product Laboratories
in Burbank, starting as an engineer and ending as a health physicist before going to law
school. After passing the California Bar Examination and working as a patent attorney, he
joined Christie, Parker & Hale, an intellectual property law firm in Pasadena. Hsueh special-
izes in patent prosecution, helping inventors obtain patents from the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office.
How did you go about finding yourinterest/passion?I was always interested in pursuing a lawcareer because my grandfather was a promi-nent judge in pre-communist China. I reallyadmired him.
What’s the secret to landing a job?If there’s an economic recession, it will makeit even harder for first-time job seekers toland a competitive job, so don’t get discour-aged. Apply the art of effective negotiationtactics. Be persistent in a polite, acceptablemanner. I almost did not get hired at my firstlaw firm after working there as a summerassociate, largely due to one individual whoapparently did not like me; I contacted otherpartners that I had worked with and they
supported me by arguing on my behalf. I waseventually offered a job.
What are some things to think aboutwhile considering a potential job?Know your strengths and interests, and alsoremember that it’s okay to change directionsin your career path, especially because jobsare in transition. Whether it’s due to out-sourcing, downsizing or some other unex-pected shift, be prepared to reinvent your-self. Rely on your personal skills, your friend-ships and stay informed about the worldaround you.
Have additional questions? [email protected].
PHOTOCOURTESY
OFPETER
HSUEH
DECEMBER 1, 2008
<career corner>
Issue 8F December 1.qxp 11/24/2008 12:00 PM Page 4
3engineeringNews
Get the complete College calendar atwww.coe.berkeley.edu/events.
2 engineeringNews
<announcements>10394.qxd:Layout 1 8/7/07 6:07 PM Page 3
after ceding it to UC Davis in 2007. (Prior tothat, Berkeley had won five years in a row.)The teams had recently completed EE 192,Mechatronics Design Lab, a capstone designcourse taught by EECS professor RonFearing. Under the guidance of Fearing andGSI Kevin Peterson, the students had dedi-cated their spring semester to building fast,reliable cars that could win the Natcar com-petition. In the process, they drew on theirknowledge of circuits, signal processing, con-trol and software to create a working robot.
Manandhar’s team alone poured hoursand hours into the design and redesign.They shopped for parts, constructed the car,tweaked systems and tested and tested (but
not so much as towear the car
down).Finally, aweek beforethe competi-
tion, theymade a radical and
risky decision to swap outthe entire chassis for a different one andbuild the whole car again from scratch.Why? To improve its performance.
But their luck didn’t hold, the teamreported. During one of its runs around thetrack, the car went haywire, they toldManandhar, and drove itself into a wall.Totaled. Manandhar, who couldn’t attendthe competition, finished the call andhung up. “Oh, I was bummed,” he recalls.
Then his teammates called back. Ha, ha! They’d won the competition.“It was awesome,” says teammate Trung
Tran, an EECS senior, referring mainly to thewin, but also to the practical joke they hadpulled off. (Incidentally, the three thought itwould be funny to name their car “OffTrack” at the beginning of the project.)
“Hearing that we won was very nice,” saysManandhar, grinning. “Finally.”
“My only disappointment was that wedidn’t set a new speed record,” adds EECSsenior Larry Van Pham Ly, referring to theirwinning time of 30.61 seconds, or 9.26 feetper second. (The record of 9.86 feet per sec-ond, set in 2006, is held by Robert Gregg,John Breneman and Rick Mann, now allBerkeley alumni.)
Cal’s ambition translated into impressiveresults. Berkeley swept the competition, cap-turing first through sixth places. The closestrival, a UC Davis team, took seventh.
Driven to winContinued from page 1
DECEMBER 1, 2008
ith graduation just six monthsaway, EECS senior Willis Lin is
applying for jobs, and that got himthinking about the value of his BerkeleyEngineering degree. Recently, he made agift to the college to support its sterlingreputation.
Lin donated to the 2009 EngineeringSenior Gift Campaign, which aims toraise $10,000 from 50 percent of thesenior class to support the college’smission to provide the best engineeringeducation in the world. The campaign,launched October 27 and part of thelarger “Campaign for Berkeley,” gener-ates funding to sustain programs andactivities that enrich the undergraduateexperience.
Donations like Lin’s are critical. Thecollege, despite its public university sta-tus, receives only one-third of its oper-ating budget from the state government(that includes student fees). The futurevalue of a Berkeley Engineering degreerests on alumni and other individualswho are willing to support its upkeep.
“It seems to be a built-in culture atprivate schools like Stanford whereolder alumni give, and that tradition ispassed on to younger alumni,” Linobserves. “We need to be doing this.I’ve had some friends complain abouthow old some piece of classroomequipment is, but if you don’t giveback, you can’t complain.”
Everyone who donates will receive
a small appreciation gift from the col-lege and their names will be published inthe college’s annual report and otherpublications. In addition, every studentwho makes a gift of $35 or more andpledges to make an equal gift over thenext three years will receive a compli-mentary Berkeley Engineering Alumnilicense plate frame. It’s the college’s wayof saying thanks for your extra support.To make a gift, visit the website below.
The Class of 2009 is also looking forstudent volunteers to join its leadershipcommittee. For more information,get in touch with Tara McCulloch [email protected].
How much do you valueyour degree? RACHEL
SHAFERPHOTO
BEARS WHO SHARE: ”You can’t get a bettereducation anywhere else,” Willis Lin says,explaining why he was motivated to donateto the Engineering Senior Gift Campaign.
www.coe.berkeley.edu/seniorgiftContinued on page 4
W
Issue 8F December 1.qxp 11/24/2008 12:00 PM Page 3
Green innovation lectureUC Davis associate professor Andrew Hargadon will deliver a talkentitled “The Networks of (Green) Innovation” on WEDNESDAY,DECEMBER 3, at noon in 290 Hearst Memorial Mining Building.The event, part of the CITRIS Research Exchange at UC Berkeley, isfree and open to the public. For more information, go towww.citris-uc.org/events/research_exchanges.
December gradsCongratulations on your upcoming graduation from BerkeleyEngineering, and welcome to the alumni community! We’d like tohonor your success at a festive chocolate fondue and champagnereception. Join your classmates, faculty and college staff in theBetty and Gordon Moore Lobby of Hearst Memorial MiningBuilding at 5 p.m. Wednesday, December 10. Send an e-mail [email protected] before FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5, to RSVP andreserve your special gift.
What do you like about your job?I love new gadgets and technological innova-tions; working with inventors exposes me tothe latest developments out there. It’s espe-cially gratifying to see the new products thatI helped get patents for, whether I’m at thesupermarket or watching commercials onTV. Another great thing about my job is thatmost of the attorneys here have engineeringor science degrees so I feel comfortable inmy peer group.
Tinker DayEngineers and non-engineers are invited to Tinker Day, whichtakes place every Friday from 2 to 5 p.m. in the north foyer ofHesse Hall. Come tinker on your projects or learn new tinkeringskills. For information, e-mail Romy at [email protected].
Win a $100 Best Buy gift cardTake a short survey about Engineering News, and you’ll automati-cally be entered into a raffle drawing for the $100 Best Buy giftcard. Surveys can be found in the waiting area of 308 McLaughlinHall, or take it online at www.coe.berkeley.edu/news-center/publica-tions/engineering-news/take-our-survey.html. We want to improvethis publication to better serve you!
WITH MSE/NE ALUM PETER HSUEH
After graduating from Cal, Peter Hsueh (B.S.’93 MSE/NE) earned a master’s degree in
health physics from Texas A&M. He worked for two years at Isotope Product Laboratories
in Burbank, starting as an engineer and ending as a health physicist before going to law
school. After passing the California Bar Examination and working as a patent attorney, he
joined Christie, Parker & Hale, an intellectual property law firm in Pasadena. Hsueh special-
izes in patent prosecution, helping inventors obtain patents from the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office.
How did you go about finding yourinterest/passion?I was always interested in pursuing a lawcareer because my grandfather was a promi-nent judge in pre-communist China. I reallyadmired him.
What’s the secret to landing a job?If there’s an economic recession, it will makeit even harder for first-time job seekers toland a competitive job, so don’t get discour-aged. Apply the art of effective negotiationtactics. Be persistent in a polite, acceptablemanner. I almost did not get hired at my firstlaw firm after working there as a summerassociate, largely due to one individual whoapparently did not like me; I contacted otherpartners that I had worked with and they
supported me by arguing on my behalf. I waseventually offered a job.
What are some things to think aboutwhile considering a potential job?Know your strengths and interests, and alsoremember that it’s okay to change directionsin your career path, especially because jobsare in transition. Whether it’s due to out-sourcing, downsizing or some other unex-pected shift, be prepared to reinvent your-self. Rely on your personal skills, your friend-ships and stay informed about the worldaround you.
Have additional questions? [email protected].
PHOTOCOURTESY
OFPETER
HSUEH
DECEMBER 1, 2008
<career corner>
Issue 8F December 1.qxp 11/24/2008 12:00 PM Page 4
engineeringNews
<of note>
4 engineeringNews
POPQUIZ
COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING • UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
engineeringNews
10394.qxd:Layout 1 8/7/07 6:07 PM Page 1
Congratulations to EECS graduate students AshimaAtul, Erika Chin, David Poll, Henry Cook, Seth Horriganand Joshua Paul! They are among 50 students honored asthe Siebel Foundation’s 2009 Siebel Scholars. Pictured top,from left, are Dean Shankar Sastry, Cook, Horrigan, Chinand EECS professor Costas Spanos. Pictured bottom, fromleft, are Paul, Atul and EECS professor Edward Lee.
Published biweekly on Thursdays during the academic year bythe Engineering Marketing and Communications Office, Collegeof Engineering, University of California, Berkeley. Copy deadlineis 4:00 p.m. on the Monday preceding publication.
Rachel Shafermanaging editor and writer
Megan Mansell Williamsreporter
S. Shankar Sastrydean
Karen Rhodesexecutive director, marketing and communications
Professor Fearing credits the suc-cess to highly motivated students,GSI Peterson’s expertise and anextensive testing period thatallowed teams to identify bugs andimprove performance.
“The system is limitedby its weakest compo-nent, which could bea mechanical item,an electrical connec-tor, a circuit, a sen-sor or an algorithm,”Fearing explains.“Students get a chanceto work on all levels ofdesign, and we have enoughtime at the end of the semester thatthese designs can really be provenand improved.”
So what was Manandhar, Tranand Van Pham Ly’s secret to win-ning? There were several. They con-sulted with record-holder RickMann. They used their own fundsto buy a new chassis (actually two),replacing the older, heavier onethey’d inherited from a previousteam. They used a servo motor thatoffered finer, more sophisticatedcontrol. (“A regular DC motor issort of boring,” says Tran.) Theydesigned the car so it would “learn”
the track as it made its initial run,optimizing later runs to minimizedrift on the curves and maximizespeed on the straightaways. Theyinstalled a wireless Bluetooth con-
nection in the car so prob-lems could be debugged
as they occurred inreal time, makingtesting highly effi-cient. They dividedup areas of respon-sibility and gave
each other freedomto invent and push
the car’s physical limits.Above all, they kept their
sense of humor.“It was a good time,” says
Manandhar.
University of California, BerkeleyEngineering News312 McLaughlin HallBerkeley, California 94720-1704Phone: 510 642.5857Fax: 510 643.8882
www.coe.berkeley.edu/news-center/publications/engineering-news
DECEMBER 1, 2008
JAYNE
ANDERSON
PHOTOS
“My only disappointment
was that we didn’tset a new speed
record.”
SUDOKUEnter digits from 1 to 9into the blank spaces. Everyrow must contain one ofeach digit. So must everycolumn, as must every 3x3square.The answer willappear in the next issue.
Driven to win the Natcar contestContinued from page 2
Want to know more detailsabout Natcar? Go towww.ece.ucdavis.edu/natcar/. For informationabout EE 192, visit thecourse website athttp://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~ee192/archives.html
Issue 8F December 1.qxp 11/24/2008 11:59 AM Page 1
Stanley Luk, BioE junior
“You just pulled anall-nighter.”
Elysha Anderson,CEE grad student“You relate health
insurance tooperating systems.”
Angel Lam, IEOR sophomore
“People ask youwhat your major is,you tell them, andthey go, ‘Why?’”
Andrew Dussault,MSE freshman
“You see Hearst MiningCircle more than four
times per day.”
Driven to win
hen teammates phoned Ashik Manandhar(B.S.’08 EECS) from Davis last May to
report how their car did in its race, they deliveredbad news.
They had designed the small-scale electric carto drive itself around a preset, wired path thatcurves, jogs horizontally and loops back on itself.This was Natcar, a yearly competition between 20or so college teams that race their autonomousradio-controlled cars for the fastest time, a con-test sponsored by National Semiconductor andhosted at UC Davis.
It was May 23, the final day of competition,and the pressure was on. Berkeley’s teams werejockeying for first, gunning to capture the title
FASTER ANDSMARTER:From left,Larry VanPham Ly,Trung Tranand AshikManandhar display theirwinning car.
Youknow you’re
an engineering
majorwhen...
Continued on page 2
DECEMBER 1, 2008 VOL. 79, NO. 8F
RACHELSHAFER
PHOTO
ANDREW
MA
PHOTO
DOZER SKILLS: CEE senior Charlotte Wong receives instruction on
how to drive a Caterpillar D4H bulldozer from operator Joe Shryock.
Wong then drove the 22,000-pound machine solo. She and fellow stu-
dents from CE 177, Foundation Engineering Design, were on a volun-
tary field trip earlier this semester with CEE guest lecturer Richard
Short to try their hand at operating earthwork equipment. “I want
them to know what this equipment feels like, the horsepower of it, so
it’s not abstract terminology,” says Short.
SHE’S READY TO RUMBLE
A look back at how Cal recaptured theNatcar title
W
Issue 8F December 1.qxp 11/24/2008 11:59 AM Page 2
