Photos from the contest at Rutgers...March 20,1999
The contest is VERY challenging! In January, Nial McCabe, Ernie DiCicco and Bill McGowan flew to New Hamphshire to have the contest "revealed" by Dean Kamen in his house. (the robot must be built with 2 boxes of "spec parts" in less than 6 weeks....they make it impossible to build a robot a year ahead, since you have no idea what parts are supplied nor do you know the design of the contest) Dean's house is amazing...entrance way has a 2 story steam engine, a 100 year old "birdcage" elevator, a crow's nest, indoor heated pool and sauna, and an attached helicopter hanger (with 2 matching helicopters!).
I have an great video of this house.
Like the man, the house is so remarkable, that we almost forgot about the contest!
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Back to the contest...we must build a robot that:
1.can carry/pick up flat pillows (called "floppies")
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2.manuever quickly, using radio control, inside a boxing style ring with 3 other robots
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3.Push a 5 foot carpeted octagon (5 inches high) that is mounted on casters, to the opponents side of the ring.This octagon is called a "puck"
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4.climb up onto the 5 inch high puck with as many floppies as possible
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5.raise the "floppies", through whatever means, at least 8 feet off the ground
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6.For each of the steps above, a "points multiplier" kicks in
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7.during all of this, you are trying to PREVENT the otherteam from doing the same thing!
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8. to make matters MORE complicated, you are randomly "teamed" with another robot minutes before the match...you must frantically make strategy with the other robot, trying to play to each others strenghts(in our case, we usually tried to pick up maximum floppies while our teammate "defended the puck")
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We were in about a dozen contests, in the 2 days, always doing faily well....last year, the robot (in an entirely different contest..no floppies or puck) failed early on; we finished near the bottom of the pack...the scoring is complex....we believe we ended up about 10 out of about 50 this year...very good,since some of the robots were far more exotic than ours (obviously built in the Lucent or J&J engineering labs).
Alex Blinder , a CCM Electronics Major,(and part-time NJIT student), worked tirelessly with high school students to "de-bug" electrical gremlins (below)
Four robots fight it out in the ring at the Rutgers Gym.(the one on George St in New Brunswick) A total of about 50 teams entered.(below)
CCM (and NJIT) alum Matt Wood examines hoist unit as Prof. McCabe looks on.(below)
