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MicroMouse Mid-Season Get Together
I am not sure when you are planning this meeting so I am not sure if I
would be able to attend or not. I have a lot of personal travel planned
for this year, so it would be difficult for me to attend before next Summer.
David knows what I have been up to, but I thought I should share who I am
and what I have been doing with the rest of you.
I was a retread student at Cal Poly, SLO 1988-91. I did the first
MicroMouse at Cal Poly for my Senior Project. It rolled, it turned, it
looked like it could solve the maze in a respectably short time, but the
competition for my Area of Region 6 was the same day as the Rodney King
riots in Los Angeles, and the meeting was canceled. I left my mouse at the
school as an example for the next students to learn from, on the condition
that in three years time there should be no parts from the original design
rolling with the mouse. My processor and general design were replaced the
very next year, but the sensors I chose are still in operation on that
mouse (OPB707).
After graduation I kept active with the IEEE, and for a couple of years I
was in charge of the IEEE-USA Student Professional Awareness Committee. As
the SPAC CHair, I also sat on the Student Activities Committee (SAC).
While attending the SAC meetings, I promoted the MicroMouse as an
excellent, comprehensive, undergraduate student contest that needed a
home. APEC has been the main governing body for centralizing the
MicroMouse contest, but they are a consortium of three other societies and
they were only meeting every couple of years. In order for the MicroMouse
to be more widely accepted it needs a more permanent home for keeping the
rules and promoting the event, and I perceive the IEEE/RAB/SAC to be the
perfect group to take responsibility for this. The two SAC Cahirs that I
overlapped with were interested in sponsoring a student contest, but there
was a room full of argumentative academics who all had a NIH problem.
There was also an issue with none of the Regional SAC's on the committee
were aware of the specifics of the MicroMouse contest. I have been on this
campaign ever since.
I have now migrated to being the Central Area Chair for Region 6. I am the
RAB person responsible for IEEE regional activities in a territory from
Reno, Nevada to Hawaii and Northern California down to Monterey and Fresno.
This area encompases more than 1/10 the population of IEEE. Enough about
my paper title, but the importance is I get to host two meetings a year,
Fall and Spring, where the Student Leadership training Workshops are given
and the Spring Meeting hosts the Area's MicroMouse contest. In late April
I was able to hand out more than $2000 in prize money to 10 MicroMouse
teams. We have gone from allowing wall followers (from before my arrival
in this Area) to a very complex maze was solved in only 64 seconds this
year. While I would readily admit David otten, Hrgit Singh and the rest of
you do not have to fear any serious competition out of the Central Area
just yet, CSU Chico, Sacramento State, UC Davis, U, Nevada, Reno, and U o
Hawaii have all developed strong MicroMouse teams and are well on their way
to being a real hotbed of activity for a couple more years, with or without
me. A couple of the schools have formally adopted the MicroMouse into
their curriculum.
My term ends the end of this calendar year. I am hosting the Fall meeting
at UC Santa Cruz on 7 Oct, 2000 where we will promote the MicroMouse
contest and have our annual debate about the rules. Both daivid and Hargit
have been very gracious in the past about assisting fledgling MicroMousers,
and I promote them as potential resources for information, but I also
suggest they have other things to do with their time (Hargit actually works
for a living, Dave teaches school ;-) so they should do their homework
first before bothering these people.
My two main goals are:
Get the IEEE/RAB/SAC to agree to host the MicroMouse contest. I want
someone to be the "keeper of the rules" and to promote this as a vialble
contest for the undergraduate students. I am not looking for direct
financial support from SAC, as that is readily available from within the
Regional budget and local resources.
Get new, better mazes for all of the schools in this Area. I need 14 mazes
built, but I also need them to meet the "specs" and last.
Thanks for your time. I just wanted to let you know you have another
advocate out here in the etherworld, and I am doing (posative?) things to
your pet project.
John
******************************************
* John L. Wright, Jr.
* Product Apps. Engr. Dept. Mgr.
* Cypress Semiconductor
* (408) 943-2886 xjw@cypress.com
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* IEEE/R6/Central Area Chair 1999-2001
* IEEE SF Bay Area Council SCV Director 1998/99
* 1556 Halford Ave #298
* Santa Clara, CA 95051
* j.wright@ieee.org (email for life)
* (408) 993-7227 (personal voicemail)
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