NEWSLETTER OF THE BALTIMORE SECTION OF THE IEEE
DECEMBER 2003
The web site for the Baltimore section of the IEEE is:
http://www.ewh.ieee.org/r2/baltimore
IN THIS ISSUE:
2. Update Personal Information.
SPONSOR’S NOTICE:
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1. Note From The Editor.
As always, a big issue in engineering is training. I would like to share with you a web site that you might find useful for training, and a few web sites that have some useful and interesting information.
A useful web site for training is:
You need to register for this site but it’s free. The site offers numerous courses that you can go through at your own pace. There are also web seminars. Most if not all of the courses are free, and I believe the web seminars are free. I had looked at the introductory DSP course and the course on Linear Systems. In any event, it is worth checking out.
An interesting web site for science is the following:
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com
The site includes the following topics:
Astronomy
Biography
Chemistry
Mathematics
Physics
MIT has started to put a lot of their course information on the web. The site is:
This site is called the MIT OpenCourseWare. I had looked at the course on Signals and Systems a couple years ago. It was a basic signal processing course and included all the course notes.
This site contains listings of technical magazines:
http://www.techexpo.com/tech_mag.html
The following are some sites related to signal processing:
Rice University maintains a website sponsored by the IEEE Signal Processing Society and the NSF. This is the Signal Processing Information Base and is a clearinghouse for information on many aspects of signal processing:
http://spib.rice.edu/spib.html
A web site that leads to other DSP sites is:
http://www.mrccos.com/~jmagno/dsplinks.html
The web page of DSP programming guru, Dr. Jeff Taft, is:
http://nauticom.net/www/jdtaft
A DSP book available for free on the Internet is "The Scientist and Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing" by Steven W. Smith:
Finally, on a somewhat different note, if you’re a Star Trek fan, the following site will appeal to you:
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/bpp
This is the web site for the NASA Breakthrough Propulsion Physics (BPP) Project. It discusses the possibilities of propulsion without propellant, as well as the warp drive. (Some scientists think that it might be possible someday.)
2. 
Update Personal Information.
You can update your personal information directly on the IEEE website. In particular, make sure that the IEEE has your correct email address. When the IEEE sends out our newsletter, they use the email address that you have on record with the IEEE.
To access your information, go to the IEEE web site at:
Then select the category “Membership” in the left-hand menu. Then select the category “Manage your Membership” in the left-hand menu. Follow the instructions given on the page.
3. Meetings.
IEEE Computer Society:
The next meeting of the IEEE Computer Society, Baltimore Chapter, will be held on Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2003, at the Historical Electronics Museum near BWI airport. Refreshments will be served at 6:00 PM, and the meeting will begin at 6:30. Our guest speaker will be Daniel Ryan, who will discuss recent developments in the area of CyberLaw.
For more details, see the chapter website at:
http://www.ewh.ieee.org/r2/baltimore/Chapter/Computer
If you plan to attend, please try to reply to this message by Dec. 12 so we can estimate the amount of refreshments we will need.
Garth R. MacKenzie
Associate Chair, Information & Telecommunication Studies Department/
Program Director, M.S. in Information Technology
Graduate School
University of Maryland University College
gmackenzie@umuc.edu
4. Robot Challenge.
The Robot Challenge comes in 4 levels of complexity (taking about
2 to 6 months) depending on how big a challenge the teacher thinks his or her
students are capable of. It is very hands-on and is also more comprehensive
than just building a walking robot - it treats the robot as a piece of an
engineering project that a team of engineers may typically encounter as part of
their daily life.
The student teams working on this project must prepare a written
proposal (as though to upper management to request funding), they must
demonstrate the capability of their product by competing in an obstacle race
with similar products from other teams (their competitors), and finally they
must make a presentation to their customers (a panel of judges) to describe
what they did, the problems overcome, and how and why they were successful.
After many questions, the judges examine the robots in great detail, and grade this
portion based on the originality, creativity and careful workmanship that the
students used to build their masterpiece.
At the end of the 2 days, points from all aspects of the project
are added together and the winners are announced on our web page. Some of the
students may go on to become engineers, and some may not, but they will all
learn a lot about engineering concepts, and have a lot of fun along the way.
It also builds character, teamwork and the confidence that comes
from knowing that despite the many obstacles, they learned to overcome them and
complete the project (about 70% do).
Also important is that they are now unlikely to make a mistake if
they decide to pick engineering as their major at College.
Robot Project History
Rev. 5-8-03
Comparison year-by-year 1996-97 1997-98 1998-99 1999-00
# of Schools that requested kits: 18 18 31 26
# of teams initially: 21 37 91 74
# of kits made up: 35 50 110 120
# of kits distributed: 30 44 110* 86
*incl. 8 kits to
other IEEE sections
# of schools at Competition: 6 10 16 13
# of teams at Competition: 9 (43%) 25 (68%) 41 (45%) 29 (39%)
# of judges at Competition: 13 19 37 30
# who were IEEE student members: 0 0 14 5
# who were not IEEE members: 7 7 11 9
Best time at competition: None 10:17 11:15 3:21
Highest points awarded (max. 100): 90 78 104
# of teams completing course: None 4 6 6
# of 4-leg teams completing course: None None 4 1
# of teams attempting Automation: None None 1 3
# of teams completing course with
Automation: 0 0
Net cost to section (includes food): $1530 $2380 $3190 $3147
(before PACE,
$690 after PACE)
Comparison year-by-year 2000-01 2001-02 2002-03
# of Schools that requested kits: 27 22 19
# of teams initially: 67 54 50
# of kits made up: 70 70 146
# of kits distributed: 73 60 159_
_102 kits sent outside
# of schools at Competition: 14 14 14
# of teams at Competition: 37 (55%) 33 (61%) 30 (60%)
# of judges at Competition: 43 (2 days) 42 (2 days) 39(2days)
# who were IEEE student members: 2 6 3
# who were not IEEE members: 10 9 13
Best time at competition: 4:06 5:44 10:15
Highest points awarded (max. 100): 102 85.5 92.5
# of teams completing course: 15 10 8
# of 4-leg teams completing course: 1 1 1
# of teams attempting Automation: 5 15 8
# of teams completing course with
Automation: 2 3 1
Net cost to section (includes food): $3454 $3986 $4932
(incl $3000
for mold)
The cost to the Baltimore Section is the outlay by the Section for Kits, Manuals and Operating Expenses, less the amount paid by Schools and other IEEE Sections for multiple kits. The first kit for a school is provided FREE by our Section, subsequent kits are charged cost. Automation kits are subsidized. Gross outlay for Section in 2002-03 was $13,068. Payments received from UMES and Schools was $8136, for a net cost of $4932 - note that this included a one time cost of $3000 that we paid for the mold, and which is reducing the cost of the kits.
5. Learning Robotics.
Many members whose hobby is home electronics may have been subscribers to Poptronics magazine. Poptronics magazine stopped publishing at the beginning of this year. Another useful magazine for the electronics hobbyist is Nuts and Volts. Nuts and Volts magazine offers a variety of electronics articles. One subject that they cover is robotics, both hardware and software. For those interested in electronics as a hobby and in particular learning some robotics basics, you may want to check out the website for Nuts and Volts given below:
6. Electronics In Flight.
This article was written by Brian Sequeira.
The year 2003 represents the 100th
anniversary of the first historic flight undertaken by the Wright Brothers at
Kitty Hawk. As the Aerospace industry
celebrates 100 years of flight, the Institution of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers (IEEE) has the opportunity to reflect on the important role that
electronics played and continues to play in the evolution of flight.
Initial developments of electronic
systems focused on radio communications between ground and aircraft and between
aircraft in squadrons. Early development
in radar concentrated on detection of airborne marauders during the World
Wars. Soon those developments became
more cooperative as radars quickly became an essential part of the flight
cockpit. Special techniques such as
Displaced Phase Center, Pulse Doppler, and Synthetic Aperture were developed as
the radar went airborne. Today, these
techniques provide the pilot with unprecedented situation awareness and
decision options, and landing aids.
The progression of navigation from
celestial to radio represents another important impact that electronics has had
on flight. The radar work mentioned
above revealed the all-weather nature of radio signal propagation and by
extension its ability to service navigation needs irrespective of weather. Consequently, radio navigation systems
evolved from modest beginnings: Variable Omni Range (VOR), Distance Measuring
Equipment (DME), LOng RAnge Navigation (LORAN), and the military’s TACtical Air
Navigation (TACAN). Continuous
improvements with these systems and the addition of Traffic control and
Collision Avoidance Systems (TCAS) firmly secured the importance of electronics
in navigation. The arrival of the
Global Position System (GPS) revolutionized the entire concept of navigation to
the point where new systems have been conceived such as the Wide Area
Augmentation System (WAAS) and Local Area Augmentation System (LAAS) that will
allow wide flexibility of flight plans, direct-as-the-crow-flies routing, and
automated landing irrespective of human visibility.
None of the modern developments would
be possible without the ubiquitous digital processor, which, in turn, owes its
existence to the development of the electronic integrated circuit. Increasing processing speeds and shrinking
chip sizes translate to a high density of functions that can be crammed into
limited cockpit space. Impressive
strides in display technology offer great flexibility in presentation format of
the data, and provide important extensions to human senses. For example, the speeds of digital
processors enable guidance and control functions that exceed the capabilities
of human reaction times. In short,
electronics is now linked with nearly every aspect of flight, from the sensors
that provide situational information to the guidance and control systems that
respond to it.
The future holds promise for even
tighter coupling between electronics and flight as the emphasis on autonomy
increases for manned and unmanned systems in terrestrial and interstellar
flight.
