A naval battle of the bots broke out in Caltech's Millikan Pond on Wednesday as five teams vied to take the trophy during ME (Mechanical Engineering) 72, the Institute's long-running engineering design competition. The five teams each built three remote-controlled amphibious robots for the 2020 event, which marked the 35th edition of the contest. Their challenge: swim (and sometimes drive) into position to shoot softball-sized foam balls into the targets before the opposing machines do so.
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Michael Mello, teaching professor of mechanical and civil engineering and ME 72 instructor, introduced his students to the game's complex rules in October, telling them, "This is your life for the next five to six months."
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The robots had to drive into the pond, then navigate through the water to their targets: a series of three-tiered towers (in which landing a ball into the higher tiers offered an ascending number of points) and a center island that began rotating 45 seconds into each five-minute game, just to make it more challenging.
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Untitled Goose Team roared into front-runner status early in the day. One of its boat-bots, which were driven by fan propulsion, sped across the water, allowing the team to "dominate" the center island early in matches and then focus on using the remaining two robots to place balls into the towers. "We wanted to keep it simple," says Maheck Jerez Terceros, a junior on Untitled Goose Team. Team BoA, meanwhile, cruised to early wins by using an Archimedes screw to propel its machines.
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This was no simple course to navigate. Bots capsized during the first match and continued to get stuck throughout the afternoon, necessitating rescues by the TAs dressed in waders who patrolled the pond to referee and to rescue.
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The five teams played round-robin during the opening round, and the wear and tear that so many games inflicted on the robots required inter-match repairs in pit row (a series of tents outside Millikan Library). "We had some motor issues, so we changed up our wiring to make it more consistent," said Ari Rosner, a junior on team BoA.
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The towers turned out to be tricky targets, as many shots bounced in and out or ricocheted toward the wrong side of the structure, scoring points for the opposing team. "That's part of the competition, and it's part of the sport of life," said Gunnar Ristroph (BS '06) of IJK Controls, who served as emcee.
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Team BoA and Untitled Goose Team charged into the championship round just as the wind picked up across the pond and wreaked havoc on the game. BoA's shots bounced away, while Goose's balls just wouldn't roll into the target on the center island. After a long bout, BoA got on the board thanks to a secret shooting strategy and managed to hold off a challenge at the end. "Our practice paid off," said junior team member Rachel Sun.
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