EECS Students Compete in 2014 McCormick Autonomous Robot Design Competition

EECS students turned in a strong showing at the 2014 McCormick Autonomous Robot Design Competition, which took place on Saturday, May 17 at the Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center.

Team Krabby, consisting of EECS Undergraduate students Ji-hoon Kim (14'), Prasanth Bijjam (BS/MS, 14'), and Jahan Alam (ME, 14') were runners up in 2nd place with their design of a six legged hexopod robot called Skynet, which featured built in infared detectors. Also, in 3rd place was team Bananabotz, comprised of EECS Undergraduate students Seth McCammon (15'), Daniel Thirman (15'), Kevin Ye (15'), Georgiy Mazin (15').

The 1st place winners and Myke Minbiole Elegant Engineering $1,000 Award recipients were team Jankbot Rises, encompassing Mechanical Engineering students Stefan Hyde (15'), Nikhil Holay (15'), and Jorge Solis (14').

Teams of students designed, built, and programed their robots to operate autonomously in events including a race, a maze, and a one-on-one competitiion. The 23rd annual competition had a new twist this year: no wheels. All eight competing robots were required to walk autonomously around the arena.

After completing a race and a maze in the preliminaries, robots in the final competition picked up Ping-Pong balls in a large rectangular arena and delivered them to a goal. As in past years, remote controls were not allowed, but teams were permitted to reprogram robots as often as they desired. Jankbot Rises picked up the most balls in the allotted time.

View a video of the competition (by Steve Slocombe), below-

View more photos of the event (by Nick Marchuk)

Read a May 21, 2014 McCormick article, titled, "Student-Designed Autonomous Robot ‘Jankbot Rises’ Wins 2014 Design Competition."