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Top-performing senior design team brings magic to project competition in 3D (February 2010)

Team Supermodel is building an automatic 3D turntable and video system for generating 3D models of any solid object.  Competing against seven other teams, they presented their design to freshmen students in Elements of Electrical Engineering, Elec 101. The idea for the project originated with Robert LiKamWa, who brought in teammates Ben Bahorich and John Cate from the Mechanical Engineering and CAAM departments. This is the first time at Rice that a CAAM student (Cate) has participated in an interdisciplinary senior design project. Robert pulled out all the stops in an entertaining and informative talk to the freshman students. For the finale, he delivered a new spin on Arthur C. Clarke's famous dictum: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from awesome [magic].” Students judged the presentations on quality, technical detail, and progress to date. As an added motivator, Professor Lin Zhong donated Nokia smart phones for the prizewinners.

Professor Gary Woods said, “This assignment motivated the seniors in a way that graded assignments alone simply cannot accomplish. The peer pressure and readiness to share their enthusiasm with freshmen, plus the amazing prizes, contributed to many of the teams significantly upgrading their performance.”

Participating teams:

Team Supermodel -- Robert LiKamWa [1st place] http://oedk.rice.edu/content.aspx?id=589
Team The Bus People -- Alysha Jeans [2nd place] http://oedk.rice.edu/content.aspx?id=592
Team Jokers & Gestures -- Jaimeet Gulati [3rd place] http://oedk.rice.edu/content.aspx?id=573
Team Trek Tracker -- Laura Liem (MechE) http://oedk.rice.edu/content.aspx?id=594
Team 6 cents -- Shamoor Anis & Chris Ertel (MechE)
Team Bluefrared -- Sam Kim http://oedk.rice.edu/content.aspx?id=576
Team PING -- Jash Guo http://oedk.rice.edu/content.aspx?id=584
Team Rockbox -- Kyle Barnhart http://oedk.rice.edu/content.aspx?id=586

 
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