Autonomous Robot ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Better!’ Wins 2017 Design Competition
‘Subsequentis’ received the Myke Minbiole Elegant Engineering Award
In a feat of stealth and strategy, a student-designed, autonomous robot named “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Better!” outmaneuvered the competition to win Northwestern’s 26th annual Design Competition and capture the $1,000 award.
“Robot Hide-and-Seek” took place Saturday, May 13 at the Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center. The winning robot triumphed by hiding for the longest amount of time.
Teams of undergraduates from a variety of engineering fields spent five months designing, building, and programming their robots. Some teams fielded classic robot designs with bump and ultrasonic sensors; others deployed GPS-like position tracking and state-of-the-art mecanum wheels, which can move in any direction.
In each head-to-head round, one team commanded a remote-controlled vehicle to find the opposing team’s robot. The human driving the remote-controlled vehicle donned a virtual reality mask to hunt the hiding robot. When the human jousted a cup off the opposing robot, the time was recorded, indicating the length of that robot’s ability to hide.
The top-scoring teams were:
- First place: I Can’t Believe It’s Not Better!, with team members Colton Colwell, Bailey Kuhn, Mathew Li, and Blake Strebel
- Second place: The Police, with team members Can Aygen, Kelly Logacho, Efe Saatci, and Cameron Tehranchi
- Third place: Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, with team member Alex Friedman
Subsequentis, which won last year’s competition, received the $500 Myke Minbiole Elegant Engineering Award. The award is named for Northwestern Engineering alumnus and 2001 Design Competition winner Minbiole, who worked as an engineer before being killed in a hit-and-run collision in 2007. Members of Subsequentis are Graham Bullmore, Eric Lutzen, Heath Reineke, and Stephen Shull.