Students share electric optimism for contest

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers at UCLA
knows its circuits.

Teams of UCLA engineering students have spent months and many
sleepless nights of algorithm tweaking for complex bundles of
circuits and sensors on wheels.

The fruits of their labor are Natcars, miniature racecars
powered by a single battery and capable of running autonomously
along a track.

Tomorrow, with five Natcars carefully packed away, 20 IEEE
members will be making the trip to Santa Clara for the National
Semiconductor Competition.

“When people get involved with these projects, they learn
more and it makes them stand out from other students,” said
Gigi Lau, a fourth-year electrical engineering student and IEEE
president.

“The team members develop a trust for each other,”
she said.

The Natcar competition tests a car’s ability to navigate
the twists and turns of a preset racetrack: a piece of reflective
tape and a wire on a dark carpet.

In order to accomplish this, project teams must design their own
circuits and sensors for the car. The sensors can be programmed to
sense the color contrast of the tape and the carpet, or to detect a
signal from the wire.

Team members must employ not only their engineering knowledge,
but also innovation in coming up with a unique and dependable
design.

“Unlike our classes and labs, for this project, there is
no manual,” Lau said. “This is creative work for
engineers.”

Juggling 22 units of the infamously intensive electrical
engineering coarseload, Lau, like many of the team members, makes
the time to remain dedicated to the organization.

“The project becomes more important than homework,”
Lau said.

“I’m sure all the project team members have less
than two hours of sleep per day.”

The process involves hours of research in advanced circuits,
sensors and programming in order to produce a running vehicle.

“Thirty to 40 percent of the stuff (the teams) are using
right now is not taught in class, so they have to spend time trying
to look up stuff that you need and understand how it works,”
said Lawrence Au, IEEE’s vice president and a fourth-year
electrical engineering student.

At last year’s competition, the car designed by the UCLA
team caught on fire before it was able to run the track. This year,
it is prepared with backups.

Six other schools will be participating in this week’s
competition, including UC Berkeley and UC Davis.

The teams from these two schools have traditionally been the
strongest, Lau said.

Berkeley and Davis engineering students are required to take a
project design class in their fourth year, which involves
participation in the Natcar competition.

“We do this as an extracurricular activity,” Lau
said. “We do it all from scratch, but we might be able to
defeat Berkeley one day.”

IEEE members who wish to participate on the project teams go
through an application and interview process. Individuals are then
grouped in three- to four-member teams based on their strengths in
various areas of engineering.

Mimi Chen, a third-year electrical engineer and a team leader
for one of the Natcar teams this year, is anticipating a sleepless
night ““ hopefully the last of many ““ before the
competition.

“We are looking forward to another all-nighter, because
from experience, the day before the competition, everything seems
to break down,” Chen said.

“But it’s a really good experience because everyone
got to bond with each other and learn from each other,” she
added.

Another major project of UCLA IEEE is the micromouse
competition, involving the design of a small robot capable of
autonomously navigating a maze and sensing barriers.

In order to efficiently make its way through the maze, the robot
also requires some degree of artificial intelligence and
memory.

The UCLA team will continue to work on its micromouse, nicknamed
Guess, over the summer in the hopes of entering it for competition
in the fall.

“The goal of this group is to promote electrical
engineering ““ not just to electrical engineers ““ but to
all students who are interested in what we’re doing,”
Au said.

The UCLA branch of IEEE will be celebrating its 40th anniversary
this Saturday. The group has come a long way in the number and
ratio of its members.

“Electrical engineering is known as a no-girl field, but
there have been more girls involved in these projects this
year,” Lau said.

But the most important lesson IEEE members learn may be those of
time management and prioritizing.

“The officers don’t get much sleep, and we
haven’t seen a movie in awhile, but the chance to be involved
in a student group comes once in a lifetime.”