SPaRC team brings home first place, award, bragging rights for Auburn
The Auburn University Student Projects and Research Committee team took the gold this weekend in the SoutheastCon Student Hardware Competition."We can be very proud of our SPaRC students for bringing home the first place trophy," said Thaddeus Roppel, faculty adviser for SPaRC and professor in electrical and computer engineering.The SPaRC team, founded by the late Professor Scotte Hodel in 2006, can also flaunt a plaque to be displayed for a year and $800 for the Auburn IEEE Student Chapter.With a group consisting of only nine members, the team beat 45 other schools from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and the country of Jamaica.The annual IEEE event was hosted by the IEEE Atlanta Section and the Georgia Tech IEEE Student Branch."Engineers Making the World a Better Place" shaped this year's theme as each team had to construct an autonomous robot that could randomly pick up and sort aluminum, plastic and glass Coca-Cola containers."It felt really great winning," said Zach Lamb, a senior in mechanical engineering.
