MIDAS Ireland member, Infineon has sponsored the 2022 UCD Robo Race which is the culmination of the Robotics Design Project Elective First Year Module. The sponsorship included prize money for the top four teams and funding to provide more sensors and parts for the module in future years.
The module reaches its conclusion with the Robo Race which this year was held in the UCD Engineering Building on Wed. 13th April. It was a very exciting and eventful evening with 16 teams (each with 2-3 students) competing for the ultimate prize. After a very tough (but fair!) Robot showdown one team was left standing to win the first prize.
The engineering challenge is quite complex for first year students as the competitor teams must adhere to strict rules in the development of their robots. Then in the competition, four robots go head to head in each round trying to run around collecting coloured balls from underneath tables in one of the large group work spaces in the Engineering Building. The room space was laid out as shown below:
To give an idea of scale, the distance from the starting area to the leftmost table in the middle row was probably about 5m – so it was being played over a very large area! White balls were worth 1 point, yellow 3 and red 6. To quote the lecturer, if any team managed to collect any balls and bring them back to the starting zone it was a win in his book.
Out of 16 teams, a few did actually manage this goal! Some crashed into tables, some ended up flipped on their back, some never moved. However, all the students in the room loved it, they were very engaged, very invested when a robot looked like it was on for a score.
Well done to all the teams for an excellent effort.