Monday, August 2, 2010
The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com

On-campus polling to change

Non-residential
buildings become new
site of polling stations
By CAITLIN HUSTON
Daily StaffReporter
As the August general primary
election approaches, Ann Arbor vot-
ers will seea change in their on-cam-
pus polling locations, as the residence
halls will no longer be used as voting
stations.
In an effort to maintain security,
polling stations previously located
in on-campus residential halls will
be shifted to non-residential campus
buildings. This move is the result of
conversations between University
and city officials, with the aid of Uni-
versity Housing and the Division of
Student Affairs.

Voters who previously reported
to Bursley Hall, Mary Markley Resi-
dence Hall, East Quadrangle and
South Quadrangle will now vote
instead at Pierpont Commons, Palmer
Commons, the Michigan League and
the Michigan Union, respectively.
University Housing spokesman
Peter Logan said though the resi-
dence halls have not previously had
any security incidents during voting
days, housing officials have had con-
cerns about opening up the buildings
to the public, particularly as the vot-
ing process has changed to an elec-
tronic system.
Logan added that because parking
around the residential halls is difficult
to find, University officials felt they
could better uphold their commit-
ment to on-campus residents' safety
while making polling locations more
accessible to the public by pursuing
other on-campus locations.

With the summer primary elec-
tions, Logan said University officials
were also concerned about how sum-
mer groups staying in residential
halls, like South Quad and orientation
students staying in East Quad, would
be affected.
The Northwood Community Cen-
ter will remain a voting location
because it does not house any resi-
dents, Logan said.
Because the new replacement loca-
tions are still situated on campus,
Logan said he feels the University
and the city worked well together to
accommodate voters.
"We're pleased with the result, and
I believe the city is pleased with the
result too," Logan said.
Ann Arbor City Clerk Jacqueline
Beaudry said the public was made
aware of the change in locations, as
every registered voter in Washtenaw
County was sent a card informing

them about the change in locations
last June. During the primary elec-
tions, Beaudry said there will also
be signs on the doors of the previous
locations, which will direct the voters
where to go instead.
Jim Kosteva, the University's
Director of Community Relations,
.said the Government Relations Office
has been working to create a better
atmosphere for voters at polling loca-
tions in general. Their work includes
brainstorming methods to reduce the
time that voters will stand in line and
to make the locations more accessible.
Kosteva added that he thinks the
voters will be able to easily adapt to
the new on-campus polling locations.
"I think and hope that voters will
see very little difference outside of the
physical location and that they will
find it as equally accessible and easy
to cast their ballot at these locations,"
he said.

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'U' researchers design robots for battlefield

Engineering team is
among finalists in
robotics competition
By SABIRA KHAN
Daily StaffReporter
Some soldiers may soon be taken
out of harm's way on the battlefield
as robots designed by a University
research team could explore and per-,
form reconnaissance in hostile ter-
rain.
Edwin Olson, assistant professor
of electrical engineering and com-
puter sciences, and his team have
been selected as finalists in the 2010
Multi Autonomous Ground-Robotic
International Challenge (MAGIC)
- a competition jointly sponsored
by the United States Department of
Defense and the Australian Depart-
ment of Defense Science and Tech-
nology Organization.
"The goal of MAGIC is to foster
technologies that will allow robots
to autonomously help in war zones.
So things like doing reconnaissance
missions and exploration and finding
bad guys and identifying bombs and
things like that," Olson said.
The competition was originally
designed to gather research propos-

als worldwide to develop robotic sys-
tems for use in military operations
and emergency situations, according
to a University press release.
Olson said the competition push-
es for robots to be made more useful
in the battlefield and for single opera-
tors to control multiple robots rather
than a team of operators maneuver-
ing a single machine.
The first round of the competition
began in November last year when
the University competed against 23
college- and corporate-based teams,
according to the release. Teams were
required to submit a film and a writ-
ten report detailing their plans along
with preliminary results.
"Between that phase and this
most recent June ... we built a team
of five robots that could autono-
mously go through an environment
and explore. There was some human
intervention involved in terms of
guiding those robots, but the robots
really did do a lot on their own,"
Olson said.
The ten teams initially select-
ed for funding had each received
a $50,000 grant to support their
research costs. However, earlier in
the month, the competition orga-
nizers visited each of the participat-
ing teams to observe their robots in
action and selected the University to

be among six finalists to receive an
additional $50,000 in grant funding.
Olson said the six teams will
be going to Australia in November
for the final round of competitions,
which will award $750,000 for the
first place team, $250,000 for the
runner-up group and $100,000 for
the third place team.
Aside from the funding that the
University will receive, the competi-
tion is also significant for Olson on a
personal level.
Olson, who said the competition
aligned with a lot of his research
goals, added that developing equip-
ment for the military was not origi-
nally part of his research agenda.
"It's not a goal of mine to devel-
op something for the military, but
I think robotics technology for the
military has a lot of good things
going for it," he said. "For one thing,
by putting robots out there, we take
our troops out of harm's way. SoI see
it fundamentally as a lifesaving tech-
nology."
Olson said the research for this
competition is different from his past
projects given that his team, which
includes five graduate students and
one undergraduate student, is faced
with developing a team of robots as
opposed to a single robot.
"From a research perspective,

working with a team of robots pres-
ents a lot of interesting challenges,"
Olson said. "We have to divide up that.
work that has to get done between
multiple robots and algorithmically
that's a difficult problem."
Olson said he and his team have
been working diligently for the past
year and will continue to do so as the
competition nears its end, adding
that they are aiming for the top prize.
"We want to show off that Michi-
gan is an emerging robotics power-
house," he said. "And I think that's
actually true, so we want the world
to know ... that Michigan is going to
be the leader in robotics."
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