Students put the machines they worked on all semester to the test in a head-to-head race
On a Monday afternoon in the Tsungming Tu Complex, a flurry of small robots battled each other. No, this wasn’t an invasion straight out of sci-fi—it was an end-of-semester competition for the ME-134 Advanced Robotics class, taught by assistant professor of mechanical engineering Markus Nemitz.
In the class, students were tasked with building their robots from scratch—starting by sketching their ideas on paper, creating CAD designs, 3D-printing all the parts, and then assembling them. Some students made bipedal robots, while others made quadrupeds.
Not only did students have to put together their robots, but they also had to program them to move.
On the final day of class on April 27, students put their robots to the test. First, robots competed in their own categories—bipedal robots with each other, and quadrupeds with each other, to see who could cross the finish line the fastest, or at all. Many robots stumbled and fell, but others triumphed as they scooted and shuffled their way across the finish line.
At the end, all the robots participated in a head-to-head battle. They were turned on and aimed toward each other—not to fight, but to try to remain upright as they crashed together in a contest to be the last robot standing.
Nemitz said every student pushed themselves in the class and all succeeded in making robots that could walk.
“Some of them walked fast, some slower, but to be honest that is not the point of the class,” Nemitz said. “The point of the class is to get an appreciation of what multidisciplinary robots are and get an understanding of computer science and mechanical engineering and electrical engineering.”
Calum Rizvi, E26, appreciated getting to spend so much time working on his robot independently.
“You get to take a lot of initiative over the project,” he said with pride as he held his kangaroo-inspired robot, a bright-orange biped with a tail for extra support. And even though his machine didn’t win, he said “it’s nice to have one long project you stick with the entire semester, and to see it all come together at the end is really rewarding.”
