Robotics Software Engineer student Matthew DeHaven’s code runs our 2-D maze in the best time of 59.1 seconds.
The results are in! Matthew DeHaven, a current Robotics Software Engineering Nanodegree program student, has taken first place in the KUKA Robotics Challenge. This former graduate of Udacity’s Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree program will head to Munich next month to visit the KIT Robotics Lab in Karlsruhe (where his winning submission was run), and also attend the NVIDIA GPU Technology Conference.
Matthew was one of only a small handful of students to successfully pass the challenge simulator during the contest portion, and he had the both the fastest time on the simulator (36 seconds) and on the actual KUKA robotics arm in the lab (59.1 seconds).
You can see his winning submission below:
Matthew works in mechanical design for an automation company, and while he had previously been considering entering robotics competitions prior to discovering the KUKA challenge, this was his first time actually entering one. “This was an interesting challenge. I had done A* (a path planning algorithm) previously but the different orientations added a new level to it.” When asked how he felt when he found out he was the winner, his answer was just one word: “Proud!”
Matthew is also excited for the networking opportunities that await him at the NVIDIA conference, but that’s not the only reason he’s looking forward to his Munich trip—he also hopes to visit Deutsches Museum, the world’s largest museum of science and technology.
On behalf of the whole Robotics team at Udacity, we congratulate Matthew and wish him an amazing trip!
If you weren’t able to participate in the KUKA Robotics Challenge this time around, we have good news for you! After October 3, we will re-open the project for submissions. All students currently enrolled in—or graduated from—the Udacity Robotics Software Engineer Nanodegree program can still complete the KUKA Path Planning Project and have their code run on the actual KUKA robotics arms at the KUKA Udacity Robotics Learning Lab at KIT. This is an amazing opportunity, and you’ll even receive a video recording of your code running on the robots, which you can use in your project portfolio. Simply go to the extracurricular section of your classroom and get started now!
Congratulations to all our participants!
