Nov. 1, 2010

Huddled over a gray robot, a student pushed the start button and watched as the small machine lurched forward, completed a turn and moved toward an obstacle.

Then disaster struck. The robot veered off course, driving over white masking tape and spinning around several times – disqualifying the team that programmed it.

It was back to the computer for a team of students in the First Year Seminar: Otter DotCom class.

The class is part of Project Higher Ground, a program where students live in the same dormitory (in this case, Avocet Hall) and take at least two classes together.

The 25 students in the class formed themselves into eight teams. Each team assembled a Lego Mindstorm robot, then programmed it via computer “to do what we want,” one student explained.

The teams competed on a recent Thursday morning. Each team’s bot covered two courses. One was an oval-shaped track (think NASCAR); the robots had to stay inside a set of parallel lines marked off with masking tape. The other course was oddly shaped and was covered twice, once with obstacles obstructing the way, the other obstacle-free.

The competitive part of it clearly engaged the students.

“We even made a test track in the lobby of their dorm, so they could practice over the weekend when the lab was locked,” said Dr. Kate Lockwood, assistant professor of Computer Science and Information Technology.

Team No. 4 – whose robot was named “Cookie” – was the overall winner. Team members Megan Louth, Ryan Lorea and Chris Carpenter piloted Cookie to victory on the oval track, and covered the obstacle course – successfully avoiding the pair of obstacles placed in its way – in 42.3 seconds to top that race as well.

Winner of the obstacle-free race was Team No. 5, whose robot was named “Yellow” (for the color of the Lego box, they said). Members of the team: Gonzalo Sanchez, Brayant Galvez and Ben Fulanovich.

If you’re interested in robots, there’ll be another opportunity to see them in competition.

In mid-December, students in Dr. Sathya Narayanan’s computer architecture class will face off with sumo wrestling robots they have assembled, wired and programmed.