At the 2013 IEEE Region 2 Student Activities Conference held at West Virginia University in April, Drexel ECE sophomore Alexander Pietrocola placed first in the Student Paper & Presentation competition.
His research paper, entitled Dynamic Control of an Omnidirectional Self Restoring Ball Balancing Robot, was an accumulation of the research Alexander has been working on since Summer 2012. The paper describes various control algorithms used to stabilize an autonomous robot that balances and moves on a spherical ball, also known as Ballbot.
The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Region 2 Student Activities Conference is an annual regional conference with students from IEEE student branches spanning Ohio to New Jersey and down to Virginia. Student branches are invited to this weekend-long event with workshops and competitions designed to build better branches and develop and show off their engineering skills. Other competitions at the conference were ethics, physics, and brown bag competitions, as well as a project showcase. Alexander represented Drexels IEEE student branch and placed first ahead of senior teams from George Mason University, University of Maryland, Gannon College, and Lafayette College.