Dear Dr.

Dennis Hong, Through this letter, I hope to convince you to accept Rodrigo Sarlo, a 1st-year Mechanical Engineering graduate student at VA Tech into your RoMeLa research group specifically to help with your Shipboard Autonomous Fire Fighting Robot project. I doubt if you would remember, but we met and chatted briefly when you guys hosted the Section F ASME meeting three years ago. I was the final doctoral student to study directly under Pradip Sheth and have done my best to fill his shoes since his passing. I first met Rodrigo during the spring of 2010 when he enrolled in a survey course in Mechatronics that I teach to all 3rd-year Mechanical Engineering majors at the University of Virginia. I quickly recognized Rodrigo as being one of the very top students in that class. I could tell that he was genuinely interested in the material that I presented in my labs and lectures and that he was actually applying it on his own outside of the class. During the following fall, I invited Rodrigo to enroll in my special Advanced Mechatronics course. I only let the very best students from my survey Mechatronics course into this elite, project-based course. Through this course, I really got to know Rodrigo better as I observed him working with teammates on such projects as designing an electric guitar, an analog effects pedal circuit, and a simple digital computer from scratch. I found that he works very well with the other students, and his analytical skills are excellent. Like you, I also serve as the faculty advisor for UVAs student section of ASME. Rodrigo was as a member of this groups executive board and proved to be an excellent leader. The ASME students participate in the annual design competition (yes, we have actually started participating in these now that I have taken over) and other fun extracurricular design projects. For example, during Rodrigos senior year, he helped to lead this group in the construction of a UVA-themed pinball machine completely from scratch. I was genuinely impressed by the ingenious mechatronic devices that Rodrigo and his teammates were able to come up with. For example, they developed a PID-controlled fly-by-wire system whereby the player stands on a balance board and the entire playfield tilts side-to-side to mimic the players rocking motion. There are many other mechatronic inventions that Rodrigo and the other students came up with as part of this project - which all of them were doing simply for the fun of it. When Rodrigo asked me if I would serve as the technical advisor for his senior thesis project, I happily agreed. As part of his project, he developed a scale model of a vehicle rollover crash simulator for UVAs Center for Applied Biomechanics. This was a continuation of the extensive CAD modeling and simulation work that he had done for this lab during the previous summer. By the way, Rodrigo has mastered SolidWorks and Autodesk Inventor, and I am certain that he can pick up Unigraphics NX7 extremely quickly. As part of his research, I also insisted that he become familiar with the National Instruments cRIO platform, and I know that you incorporate these into many of your RoMeLa experiments. Overall, Rodrigo proved to be a diligent, independent worker. He is also just a great guy to have around.

122 Engineers Way P.O. Box 400746 Charlottesville, VA 22904-4746, Tel: 434-924-7366 Fax: 434-982-2037 E-mail: Garner@Virginia.edu www.mae.virginia.edu

Although we may not yet be fully on the map, the University of Virginia has a bourgeoning undergraduate mechatronics program within our Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Under Pradips supervision, I have personally developed our mechatronics curriculum from scratch over the better part of the last decade. The two lecture and lab-based courses that I currently teach focus on programming microcontrollers to collect and analyze data from sensors and to control smart actuators. At UVA, we provide all of our mechanical engineering undergraduate students with a strong background in electronics and programming techniques within a coherent theme of mechatronic applications. Many of my former students have written back to me and expressed that they have felt far more prepared for the graduate coursework and research that they were encountering in mechatronics than most of their peers. Unfortunately, we currently do not offer any graduate research or coursework specifically in mechatronics at UVA otherwise, I would have tried to convince Rodrigo to work for me in graduate school and kept his talent all to myself! I have no doubt that Rodrigo will fit in extremely well as a member of your RoMeLa research group. You have personally toured me through your lab, and I am confident that this is exactly the sort of environment in which Rodrigo will be able to continue to hone his mechatronics skills while doing fun and important research. From what I have heard, I wholeheartedly believe that this SAFFiR project would be an excellent match for Rodrigos exceptional abilities. Please to not hesitate to contact me if you have any further questions about Rodrigo or what I have already taught him through our undergraduate mechatronics curriculum here at UVA. Of course, please let me know the next time that you are visiting Charlottesville so that I can personally give you a tour of my Mechatronics Lab and our new Rapid Prototyping Lab. Sincerely,

Gavin T. Garner, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering University of Virginia (804) 241-7775 cell

122 Engineers Way P.O. Box 400746 Charlottesville, VA 22904-4746, Tel: 434-924-7366 Fax: 434-982-2037 E-mail: Garner@Virginia.edu www.mae.virginia.edu