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Bosch Community Fund awards $40,000 grant to CU-ICAR for autonomous boat STEM outreach program

April 25, 2018

The Bosch Community Fund has awarded Clemson a $40,000 grant to develop and execute a STEM outreach program focused on autonomous boat technologies for students across the Upstate.

This award builds on a September 2017 grant from the Bosch Community Fund that supported the development of an autonomous boat “road map” using the AB developed by Bosch Rexroth apprentices as a springboard. The outcome of the first grant period was a roadmap outlining the full scope of the AB platform and its potential integration into education and outreach, integration of the AB into a Clemson Automotive Electronics course (71 students), and an autonomous boat competition by students

In the summer of 2018, Drs. Srikanth Pilla and Yunyi Jia in Automotive Engineering will engage approximately 20-40 students from Clemson, a technical college (e.g. Greenville Technical College), and local middle and high schools (e.g. Phinnize J. Fisher Middle School, the South Carolina’s Governor School for Mathematics and Sciences) in sustainability, advanced materials, and autonomous technologies training using the Bosch autonomous boat concept and the platform that Drs. Jia and Pilla co-developed using prior grant support.

In the fall of 2018, they will engage a multi-disciplinary team of approximately 80-100 Clemson graduate students in a design competition. Dr. Pilla’s students will participate in a sustainable boat design and sustainability analysis course, and Dr. Jia’s students will participate in a sensing and autonomy design course. Students from both courses will combine their skills and knowledge to design sustainable and autonomous boats for an end-of-semester competition.

Thank you, Bosch Community Fund, for supporting STEM outreach and education at Clemson!