RoboRugby 2012
After many weeks of hard work, the teams of
first-year engineering students finally got to see their robots in
action on 17 April. Twenty-one robots competed in 40 matches
to decide the winner of the eighth RoboRugby competition.
Team Freeballers were ranked in first place going
into the competition, and they certainly lived up to expectations.
This well-designed robot had a very reliable program, not
going for the risky options, but able to score points even after
colliding with their opponent. This strategy work well,
giving high scores for Freeballers, until they met Erika!
That match could have changed the
course of the competition, with the robots tied at two points each.
However, the tie-break rules worked in favour of Freeballers,
who went on to have two more convincing wins and take first place in
the competition.
| The winning robot,
designed, built and programmed by Martin Cowan,
John Faulkner and Conor McKiernan.
|
Second place went to Erika, a fast robot with an
ingenious mechanism for grabbing the valuable red ball. This
gave her victory in her first three matches, until that fateful
encounter with Freeballers. She now had to work a lot harder
to fight back into contention, winning three more matches to meet
Freeballers again in the final. This time there was no need
for tie-break rules - Freeballers clocked up the highest score of the
competition, and there was nothing more that Erika could do.
| Erika with her
designers, Ruth Quinn, Alison Murphy
and Robert O'Keeffe.
|
Next comes K9, a robot with a tail! This
complicated design achieved three wins in its early matches, but then
lost its sense
of direction, and started scoring points for the opposition!
Beaten by Freeballers, and again by Erika, K9 had to settle
for third place.
| K9, designed by
Seán Craddock, Angus Pickering and
Eóin Tuohy.
|
For full results, see the competition
page.
What is RoboRugby?
RoboRugby is a game where
small autonomous robots try to score points by moving balls into the
scoring areas at each end of the playing table. A match
involves 2 robots and many balls of different colour and
value. Each match lasts for 60 seconds, and the position of
the balls at the end of the match determines the score.
The robots are designed and built by
students, mostly first-year Engineering students, working in small
teams. Each robot must be built from a standard kit of parts. The robots
are controlled by an on-board computer, programmed in advance of the
competition. There is no remote control - the team cannot
intervene during a match. The robots must rely on their
programming and on information from sensors to navigate around the
table, find balls and move them to the scoring areas.
Why RoboRugby?
Design and problem-solving are an important
part of an Engineering education and there is no substitute for
learning by doing. The RoboRugby design
exercise provides an interesting and enjoyable problem, with plenty of
scope for innovation and creative thinking. The competition
and prizes provide an extra incentive, thanks to generous sponsorship
from Siemens Ireland.
RoboRugby forms the basis
of a module: EEEN 10020 - Robotics
Design Project. It is available as an
elective module under the UCD Horizons system, to students
who have taken an introductory module in Electronic and Electrical
Engineering.
|
Pictures below
courtesy of Pierre Jolivet, UCD
|
