Bodine Donates 40 Motors to University of California

Bodine Electric Co. donated 40 DC gear motors to a robotics class at University of California at Santa Cruz. According to the company's press releae, the $5,000 motors were used in a final project for a mechatronics class where students designed robots capable of shooting targets sighted with LED sensors. "We greatly appreciated Bodine's help," says Prof. Gabriel Elkaim. "It is very important for the students to have real motors to experiment on and get hands-on experience in addition to theory. We salvaged motors from other places, but Bodine's motors definately helped. We'll still use Bodine's motors and I'm using two right now in my PhD research." Bodine has previously donated motors that have turned up in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Grand Challenge, the U.S. Department of Defense million dollar prize competition for a successful unmanned robot vehicle. Other motors have been donated to North Dakota State for their engineering department's solar car race and to design teams on "Battle Bots".