OU Engineering

In June, the Sooner Racing Team (SRT) placed in the Top 10 at Formula SAE Nevada. Held at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, 40 teams from across the globe took part with the University of Oklahoma finishing eighth. Nine OU students comprised this year’s winning team.  “This year was a big year for OU as it was the first time in many years that we placed in the Top 10,” said Mrinal Saha, aerospace and mechanical engineering professor who serves as SRT adviser.  “I’m extremely pleased with the Formula SAE results. This competition allows our students to use their knowledge to design and build formula-style race cars.”   Formula SAE is a design competitive sponsored by the Society of Automotive Engineers. The Sooner Racing Team was formed in 1994. Since then, the team has competed in every FSAE event since 1995 but 1998. To learn more about the Sooner Racing Team, email  soonerracingteam@ou.edu or visit sae.ou.edu . Photo: SRT d rivers for Formula SAE Nevada were OU students  Sierra Martinez

In June, engineering students at the University of Oklahoma won first place at the Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC) Auto-Nav challenge in Rochester, Michigan.   The students were part of OU’s Sooner Competitive Robotics team and they shared the excitement of winning the university’s first-ever IGVC competition. The Auto-Nav challenge entails a robot navigating a road course laid out in a parking lot, which involves staying in the lanes, avoiding traffic barrels and other obstacles, and pursuing GPS coordinates – all with no driver input. The OU students designed, fabricated and programmed their robot, the Aluminum Whale, entirely from scratch over a two-year period. The robot gets its funny name from their first drive test, in which the robot’s low ground clearance caused it to get “beached” anytime it wasn’t on flat pavement, says OU engineering alumnus Kevin Robb, of Aledo, Texas. Robb adds that with so many veteran teams competing, the OU team wasn’t sure they had a cha

At a summer camp at the University of Oklahoma, high school juniors and seniors learned how to create a Styrofoam support beam, build a Popsicle stick bridge and code a LabView robot.  They learned these engineering marvels and more during OU Engineering Days sponsored by Boeing, a day camp where students experience different engineering fields on the Norman campus. About 90 students from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas and Texas took part in the June event. Engineering Days provides rising juniors and seniors with a glimpse into college-level concepts in the diverse field of engineering. The classes are taught by faculty who bring real-world expertise into the classroom, says Dalton Brasington who oversees outreach and recruitment for the OU Gallogly College of Engineering. “Engineering Days exposes high school juniors and seniors to the wide world of engineering through exciting projects and dynamic learning environments. Each camp day focuses on a different discipline,” Brasington said.