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the glenview lantern | June 14, 2018 | 3
South’s autonomous vehicle races to victory
Grady Bruch, Editorial Intern
With multi-billion dollar
companies like Intel and
Google racing to create the
optimal self-driving vehicle,
the Glenbrook South
Engineering Club has decided
to throw its hat into
the ring to create the next
great feat of technology.
The club spent months
creating a three-wheeled
vehicle that could maneuver
through an obstacle
course without any assistance
or guidance. Noah
Jon, one of the group members
who helped create the
car from scratch, knew how
big of a commitment the
car would be for him and
his teammates.
“We met on Thursdays
every week, but during
spring break, we met every
day for a few hours and
weekends as the competition
got closer,” Jon said.
The club is sponsored
by two GBS teachers, Neil
Schmidgall from the science
department and Michael
Sinde from the career
and tech education department.
Their jobs as teachers
don’t fall far off base
from their positions as club
sponsors.
“They kind of help us
with troubleshooting often,
and if there’s a problem we
can’t deal with, we go to
them and they kind of help
us,” Jon said. “They don’t
do everything, they just
lead the way.”
The club had a successful
trip to the University
of Michigan in May when
its vehicle won multiple
awards at the Square One
Autonomous Innovative
Vehicle Design Challenge.
The Titans placed second
in ambassadorship for their
contribution to Springman
Middle School, where the
GBS students (left to right) Alex Chang, Keyur Patel and
Noah Jon work together to build their vehicle.
The team
Students
Alex Chang
Nicholas Ermolov
Noah Jon
Keyur Patel
George Gikas
Michael Polinski
Will Okuno
Jeremy Friedman
Teachers
Michael Sinde
Neil Schmidgall
club introduced its car to
the students.
“We went to Springman
Middle School to help
spread these ideas we had
and spark an interest for
our program in middleschool
kids,” Jon said.
The club also took home
second place in design innovation,
as they were one of
the first teams ever to design
a car with three wheels.
The inspiration for the
car’s design was found
where you find pretty much
everything these days: the
internet.
“We got that inspiration
from a short clip we
found. It had three wheels,
so it could maneuver itself
really well in between different
objects or things that
were in the way, and move
things,” Jon said. “It was
very precise. That was our
focus this year. We wanted
stability over speed.”
The competition consisted
of six different tasks
that varied from identifying
whether to stop or go at a
stoplight and parallel parking
all the way to maneuvering
through a maze by
identifying magnets.
According to Schmidgall,
“We’ve been doing
this about six years and no
one car has completed every
single challenge.”
But even still, Jon believes
the club could’ve
come home with more silverware
without a few mix
ups.
“At the competition,
we had some mechanical
failures, so we didn’t really
achieve as much as
we’d hoped,” Jon said. “If
our car was successful, we
probably would’ve gotten
first place in a lot of other
things.”
With the competition
over, the club sponsors
look to the students for possible
inspiration for future
modifications.
“We tell the kids every
year, you get all summer
to think about a new idea,
maybe we’ll use some of it
this year,” Schmidgall said.
The Glenbrook South Engineering Club won several awards during the Autonomous
Innovative Vehicle Design Challenge in May at the University of Michigan. PHOTOS
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