TOLEDO, Ohio — The University of Toledo College of Engineering hosted one of the EVIS America industry tours on Nov. 3, showing delegates how students are working on robotics, electrification and automation. The summit's conference and Innovation Expo follow on Nov. 4–5 at the Glass City Center.
Tour schedule
3:30–3:50 p.m. — Introductory presentation, SSOE Seminar Room
3:50–4:05 p.m. — Formula SAE and student vehicle projects
4:05–4:20 p.m. — EV Club and electrification projects
4:20–4:35 p.m. — Robotics Club and autonomous systems
4:35–5:00 p.m. — Robotics, advanced manufacturing and Industry 4.0 labs
The college also promoted its Corporate Partners Program, with annual levels from $6,000 to $20,000 or more under a five-year membership.
Building for the Moon
At the Robotics Club stop, students said they had submitted preliminary design review materials to NASA and were accepted into its Lunabotics challenge and a second NASA competition based on surviving lunar south pole conditions. The Lunabotics robot is planned at about 150 by 75 by 50 centimeters and about 40 kilograms dry.
Full autonomy is the goal. “We have to automate the whole system to earn maximum points,” one student said, though the team will keep a manual option because “finishing the course is better than not finishing it.”
Earlier lunar rovers are shaping the drivetrain. The team first considered tracks, but one student said regolith particles “are so tiny and abrasive that they can get into the tracks and ruin the mechanism from the inside out.” Students also pointed to six-wheel designs with independent movement. For extreme cold, they are looking at solid-state batteries and at how to power both motors and tiny sensors. Beyond competition, they hope to reconfigure the robot for remotely controlled university tours.
Battle bots with a public mission
Closer to home, the club runs Robot Wars at the end of each fall and spring semester for UToledo students, club members and local K-12 teams, according to its display board. The contest uses one- to two-pound combat robots and has destructive and non-destructive divisions. A senior design team is building a safe arena for future events.
Ladder logic beyond sequencing
A poster by club president and mechanical engineering Ph.D. student Behnam Zaker, Mitch Dupuis, Dr. Nicoleta Ene and Dr. William Ted Evans showed a Rubik's Cube solver written in ladder logic for a Siemens S7-1215C PLC. It solved all 100 randomized test scrambles, averaging 175.8 moves, while using about 17% of load memory and 18% of work memory. The poster ties the project to the college's Robotic Rubik's Cube Challenge for middle and high schools.
Editor's Note
Industry tours usually center on plants and fleets, yet this one gave student clubs a stop of their own in a manufacturing region. The technical choices on display, including autonomy with a manual fallback, power architecture and PLC programming, map closely to factory-floor practice. RobotToday sees the talent pipeline as the real story here, and it deserves attention from Midwest automation employers.
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