LARAMIE, Wyo., May 28 -- The University of Wyoming issued the following news release:

When then-University of Wyoming engineering students Christian Bitzas, Oreoluwa Babatunde and Brady Wagstaff noticed a lack of local tech opportunities in Laramie, they decided to build something themselves.

An idea sparked when Bitzas's father, a home inspector, needed a safe way to check out tight crawl spaces. While options existed in the inspection vehicle field, the team was confident it could build something better.

With help from Zoë Worthen, a UW business management graduate student from Rozet, the first prototype quickly turned into UplinkRobotics, a startup based in Laramie. The company won the John P. Ellbogen $50K Entrepreneurship Co...