UC Robotics Prof. Ernie Hall Takes $10,000 Grand Prize in Microsoft Contest

An unfamiliar voice at the door asks for Dr. Ernie Hall. Suddenly balloons and cameras appear — along with an enormous check made out to Ernie Hall in the amount of $10,000. Microsoft arrived at UC with a flourish to present Hall the grand prize in their “Made in Express” Contest. 

Microsoft had promised to announce the winners at noon on Sept. 19. UC robotics team members gathered in the basement of Baldwin with Hall and his wife, Bettie, a PhD student in the College of Education, Criminal Justice and Human Services. Quietly Gautam Reddy appeared and introduced himself as Microsoft’s academic developer relations manager for the Great Lakes Region. Would he be making the announcement at noon or would he tell the team to look at the Made in Express Web site for the announcement?

“I believe it will be on the Web site,” was his understated answer. Well, the announcement

was

on the Web, but the team was already jubilantly posing for pictures with the presenters — and that big check. Mark Jewett, senior product manager for Microsoft’s Server and Tools Marketing, and Jacqueline Russell, the product manager for Microsoft’sVisual Studio Express Editions, had flown in from Redmond, Wash., the night before. Reddy, Jewett and Russell had surprised the University of Cincinnati researcher with a presentation worthy of a publishing sweepstakes.

The “Made in Express” Contest was the brainchild of the Microsoft Visual Studio and SQL Server Express Team. One of their goals was to encourage people to encourage people to see what they could do with Visual Studio Express and SQL Server Express. Microsoft describes these products as “lightweight, easy-to-use and easy-to-learn tools for the hobbyist, novice, and student developer. These tools can be used for Web development, Windows development, and database development.”

“One of the things we validated in this contest is that technology has practical origins,” said Jewett. Feedback from the finalists indicated that people were anxious to test the software “to learn something to do something — not just because ‘I can.’”

Hall praised the contest, saying that one thing that attracted him was that all of the 12 finalists walked away with an award. “Everybody was a winner!” he cheered. “We can all be winners — and that’s the point.”

Jewett quoted the comments of contest judge Robert Scoble (known as a father of blogging) in his presentation of the award: “Ernie Hall’s robot just stood out. His videos, blogs and the project itself made it a clear winner right away.”

“As part of the process, Hall had to keep a blog detailing his learning curve. Well, first he had to learn how to blog. That he did, as he noted in a recent posting, “You can learn C# even if you are 65.” So you

can

teach an old dog to blog!

In the “idea phase” of the contest, Ernie described what he would do with Visual Studio Express and an all-terrain self-maneuverable robot. The robot was an Ernie-built original, but similar to the Bearcat Cub. Here’s his description:
 
I would use Express to build a highly-intelligent robotic vehicle that is able to autonomously navigate complex terrain. I would use Visual Studio Express to write code in C# for a Creative Controller to interface with various sensors on the robot such as cameras and three dimensional stereo vision, laser scanner, digital compass, GPS and all the motion control and artificial intelligence. The Visual Studio Express project would include an advanced architecture for a "creative control" that uses adaptive critic neural networks to measure the environment, decide on a task and then try to perform this task in an optimum manner. Using this design, the robot can make its own decisions and take decisive actions. The world model used for navigation would be stored in a SQL Server Express database.

Hall now plans to turn his code and blog entries into a course for his computer science and engineering robotics students. He is the director of the UC Center for Robotics in the College of Engineering's Mechanical, Industrial and Nuclear Engineering Department.

“Our main product is our students and graduates,” says Hall. He tries to get area companies involved in their work as much as possible. “Why wait until they’re employees and send them to expensive training, when you can sponsor them as students and have them develop technologies in UC’s lab?”

Jewett told Hall that he set an example for other professors to follow.

You’ve hit on a new way to develop curriculum — enter a contest!” Jewett told Hall. Hall said that he wanted to set an example to take a risk, go the extra mile and learn a new program — just as he asks his students to do. “If I can win $10,000, then they can win two million!”

The Contest Process
The worldwide launch of the “Made in Express” Contest was announced in April 2006. At that time, participants entered the contest by telling the team what projects they would like to build using Visual Studio Express and/or SQL Server Express. “These might include Web sites or windows applications built with Express, but could also extend to projects with games, robotics, devices and more — your imagination is the limit!”

From the initial field, 12 finalists were selected by the judges to complete their projects. The finalists were posted to the “Made in Express” finalists Web page. Until Sept. 1, 2006, visitors to the page had the opportunity to vote for the “Community Choice” winner, by virtue of the number of votes received. UC voters had their eye on Ernie as their “Community Choice.”

Hall’s relationship with his students is legendary. Ask his wife, Bettie.

“We have five computers in our living room,” she says, laughing. Proudly she explains how sometimes the students would work for hours in the lab with their robots, often missing dinner. When they decided to start calling out for delivery food, Ernie Hall realized that some students weren’t in a position to pay. So he did.

Every Friday, the team gathers in the UC Robotics Lab for a pizza lunch and discussion — of robots. (What else?) This time, it was a Tuesday, but there was pizza for everyone, including the Microsoft guests.

$10,000 will pay for a lot of pizza, won’t it?

“Oh no,” says Hall. “That’s for the team."

“We were prepared to pay for the pizza,” says Bettie Hall.

Read about Microsoft’s “Made in Express” and products.

WVXU interviews Ernie!

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