Martin Garland wins IET competition

Martin Garland won the Institution of Engineering and Technology's West Midlands region sponsored University Challenge with his Robot Spider.   The competition was open to all university engineering and technology final year projects in the West Midlands and was held at the IET centre in Birmingham in the evening of  10th June 2008.  Entrants presented their project in front of a live audience and were judged by a panel of industry experts.

Martin, who won the Applied Technology section of the Faculty's graduate exhibition, beat entrants from Warwick, Birmingham and Aston universities to win the £250 first prize.  There was also a £500 prize for the Faculty which Sam Wane presented to Professor Mike Goodwin 11th June 2008.  Martin appreciated the fact that this balances out the £500 he was awarded at the Faculty's Graduate Exhibition in April.

Martin's spider is an eight legged terrain adapted robot which is able to adapt to the surface that it is crossing using feedback to control legs and armatures allowing it to identify and step over obstacles.