SDSU Mechatonics Club
The Mechatronics Club is a student organization at San Diego State University (SDSU). Our goal is to develop an environment for students at SDSU to gain valuable hands-on experience by providing team based robotics project opportunities.
The SDSU Mechatronics Club is broken down into three divisions: Mech101, RoboSub, and RoboAir. All three divisions provide students with different backgrounds the opportunity to gain hands-on experience:
Mech101 is a robotics development program that is intended for beginning to intermediate students. Mech101 members build robots that compete against each other at the end of each semester.
RoboSub is a robotics competition team that designs and builds an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) for participating in the ONR and AUVSI Foundation’s International RoboSub Competition. The RoboSub project is intended for intermediate to advanced students.
RoboAir is a robotics competition team that designs and builds an unmanned aerial (UAV) for participating in the AUVSI Seafarer Chapter’s International Student Unmanned Air Systems (SUAS) Competition. The RoboAir project is intended for intermediate to advanced students.
The divisions collaborate to ensure success of all efforts of the SDSU Mechatronics Club.
In case you are wondering, the word mechatronics is a combination of the words MECHAnical and elecTRONICS. The field of mechatronics is a multi-disciplinary field of engineering involving all areas within computer, electrical, mechanical, and software engineering.
History
The club was created during the Fall semester of 2011. Austin Owens, Founder and President, joined numerous student organizations and soon realized they just provide free food and have guest speakers, but lack opportunities for students to apply their knowledge to real-life applications. As a result, he founded the Mechatronics Club to fill the void and he was met with an overwhelmingly positive response from the SDSU College of Engineering and Department of Computer Science student bodies.
In the beginning, club members worked on independent hobbyist projects where they acquired valuable knowledge and experience. As the club grew, members started developing groups to work on larger projects. During the Spring 2013 semester, the club decided to compete and started building an Autonomous (No Pilot) Underwater Vehicle, or RoboSub. At the 2014 RoboSub competition, the team placed 8th out of 39 international teams.
At the 2015 RoboSub competition, the Mechatronics Club placed 1st out of 38 international teams. This is the first time in the 18 years this competition has taken place that a San Diego team has made it to finals or has won.
In the Spring of 2015, the RoboAir project was acquired from the SDSU Chapter of the Society of American Military Engineers.
For more information visit their web sites:
- SDSUmechatronics.org
- SDSUrobosub.org