PNI Sensor Corporation Announced the Official Launch of its Educational Sponsorship Program
SANTA ROSA, California—November 3, 2008—PNI Sensor Corporation today announced the official launch of its Educational Sponsorship Program, which offers discounted pricing and donations of sensor hardware to engineering students and student competition teams.
“PNI was founded literally in the Stanford University dorms, so we know from experience that some of the most valuable, revolutionary advances in technology come out of academia,” said Becky Oh, PNI’s CEO. “Providing sensors to students and competition teams at reduced or no cost is something we’ve always done on an informal basis. But now we’re making the program an official extension of our company’s mission to foster innovation, by enabling students to incorporate leading-edge technologies into their research.”
“Even for projects where orientation and navigation aren’t the primary focus, our technology offers the benefit of easy, virtually plug-and-play sensor integration – enabling engineers to focus on their core mission, instead of spending all their time trying to build a sensor interface and make it work,” Oh said.
The program boasts a substantial roster of successful sponsorees, including the following:
The University of Detroit Mercy’s Team µCeratops, whose autonomous ground vehicle, ThorPro, uses PNI TCM modules for orientation and navigation, won the Grand Award at the 2008 Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition. Team µCeratops also took first prize in the competition’s Navigation Challenge, which requires vehicles to reach several predetermined waypoints in the shortest time, using provided GPS coordinates.
SubjuGator, an autonomous underwater vehicle that uses PNI TCM orientation modules, won first prize at the Association for Unmanned Vehicles Systems International (AUVSI) Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition in 2005, 2006 and 2007. SubjuGator is designed and built by students of the University of Florida’s Machine Intelligence Lab.
Austria's InnoC took first prize at French aeronautics university ENSICA’s 2006 Microtransat competition with the Roboat, a fully autonomous sailboat that relies on PNI’s TCM 5 sensor module for compass heading and navigation. The competition’s ultimate goal is to lead to the development of autonomous sailboats capable of making unpiloted trans-Atlantic crossings with no external intervention.
For further information about PNI’s Educational Sponsorship Program, or to request a sponsorship, email dmckenzie@pnicorp.com.
About PNI Sensor Corporation
PNI Sensor Corporation revolutionized the compass technology market in the early 1990s, releasing the first electronic vehicle compass, the first fully electronic compass sensor module and the first handheld electronic compass. The company’s proprietary magneto-inductive sensor technology drives over 90% of the compasses on the market and is the prevailing compass technology for GM, Ford and Chrysler vehicles. PNI orientation sensor modules are used in high-end oceanographic equipment and by leading robotics manufacturers (iRobot, QinetiQ North America/Foster-Miller) in their remote-operated and autonomous robots and robotic vehicles.
Contact:
Deanna McKenzie
dmckenzie@pnicorp.com
