While Duke's basketball teams is preparing for March Madness, the University's robots have already competed in their own March Mayhem.
Six student teams participated in the annual March Mayhem robot basketball contest last night in Schiciano Auditorium in the Center for Interdisciplinary Engineering, Medicine and Applied Sciences. The Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science Design Contest invites engineering undergraduates to design remote-control robots that can pick up ping pong balls and "shoot" them into miniature basketball goals.
"We want to provide students with more hands-on experience rather than just sit in class," said Bob Kielb, chair of the mechanical design committee. "It's fun and they can compete."
Each team was allotted $350 for parts and allowed to order materials only from certain catalogs to construct their machines within a specific size limit. The mechanism for collecting balls varied from bulldozer scoops to spiked rollers to a rubber-band crate mounted on wheels, toy tank bases and roller balls.
Organizers placed the robots into brackets, and the machines competed head-to-head in three-minute double elimination rounds on a basketball court consisting of two goals and four corner pockets filled with ping pong balls. In each round, robots started in the center of the court and shot the balls into the opposite goals. Although students could not use their robots to attack the opponent's machine, defensive maneuvers were allowed-including dropping metal parts in front of the opponent's goal and shot-blocking.
Team members and their friends gathered around the small court to cheer through eight rounds, ending with the announcement of "Johnny V"-designed by senior John Cornwell and sophomore Hardy Shen-as the champion. The duo took home a grand prize of $500 and also scored a $100 award for "Best-Looking" robot.
"At the end, it was just a 'get a couple in fast and block' strategy," Shen said.
Cornwell said he would use the prize money to buy more parts.
Freshmen Willie Du, Jason Greenhut and Michael Spohn won a second place award of $200 and a "Best Design" prize of $100 for their robot "J. J.".
"We were gonna win, but then [Johnny V] blocked us," Du said. "We weren't planning for blocking."
In the past, some engineering classes have required students to participate in the contest. There was a record 28 robots one year, Kielb said. He noted that this year's completely voluntary competition led to a lower turnout than usual.
"We had less participation this year, but we had a really good crowd and good competition and some really impressive machines, so it exceeded my expectations," Kielb said, adding that he hopes to add a class specifically for the design contest to the MEMS curriculum.
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