60 second-year students in UBC Engineering Physics course go head-to-head with their autonomous robots.
To Attend the Competitoin
No registration required. However, if bringing a group of 4 or more, please contact Jon Nakane for further details about attending the event.
Fifteen teams of UBC Engineering Physics students are set to compete in “Robot Whac-A-Mole” the 13th Annual UBC Engineering Physics Robot Competition. Teams have been challenged to build robots that could autonomously pick up small balls scattered on the playing surface, identify target “moles” on the surface, and use the balls to flip over the targets while another robot is trying to flip them back in highly competitive 90-second rounds. And doing all of this on its own, without any remote controls or human interference.
The groups have made full use of the fabrication tools as used in industry – 3d printing to manufacture critical plastic pieces for their robots, laser cutting to fabricate structures in plastic and wood, and waterjet cutting for elements in sheet metal which forms the majority of their robot. These same tools are used in industry, and give students a great design experience in bringing together a fully-functional prototype – all in under 5 weeks of build-time.
Since 2001, more than 600 UBC Engineering Physics students have taken this hands-on prototyping course as part of their academic program. The challenge changes from year to year, with previous competitions including Rescue-bots, Hockey-bots, Doctor-bots, Build-bots Police-Bots, and a host of other entertaining challenges. This 12-week crash-course in prototyping gives all 60 students enrolled in Engineering Physics the chance to design every aspect of their robot designs – all of the electronics and mechanics and computer programs are done by the students in groups of 4, making use of UBC Engineering Physics’s in-house prototyping facilities.
