Evelyn Licona Wins Multiple Awards in IGVC Competition

2016 Jun 9

Bob Jones University engineering senior Evelyn Licona of La Ceiba, Honduras, and the BJU robotics team won several awards at the 24th Annual Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC) held June 3-6 at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. The team placed third in the Advanced Autonomous Navigation Course, fourth in the Inter-Operability Challenge, and fifth in the Basic Autonomous Navigation Course.

Licona assisted in designing, building and programming a 6 foot tall, 200 pound robot named "Kezia," able to navigate an outdoor obstacle course autonomously, without the use of remote controls. For the competition, Kezia traveled to various GPS waypoints while staying in a designated lane and avoiding obstacles such as construction barrels and barricades.

The BJU team qualified to compete against teams from eight other universities, including Lawrence Technological University, University of Michigan-Dearborn, Bluefield State College, Indian Institute of Technology, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Ecole de Technologies Superieure, The Citadel, and Michigan Technological University.

"I would like to thank all the BJU engineering students that had a part bringing Kezia from an idea into reality," says Will Woodham, BJU engineering professor. "I'm very pleased with the way this year's IGVC team worked together under pressure to achieve what they did against some challenging obstacles and tough competition from other universities."