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| Tuesday, March 3151:, 2015

   

Illinois Tech Robotics wins 2nd consecutive demolition title

Kori Bowns
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

For over 10 years, Illinois Tech Ro-
botics (ITR) has been a student organization
on IIT’s campus devoted to sharing robotics
through outreach events and robotics com-
petitions. On March 13-14, ITR competed in
the 27th annual Ierry Sanders Creative Design
Competition (ISDC) after months of prepara—
tion.

JSDC is a two-day competition held
at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
that ITR competes in each year. ISDC is one
of the oldest robotics competitions in America
and routinely draws competitors from schools
across the Midwest. This year, the more than
two dozen robots competing represented both
the Chicago and Urbana-Champaign cam-
puses of the University of Illinois, College of
DuPage, Valparaiso University, Northern Il—
linois University, Michigan Technological
University, and, of course, Illinois Institute of
Technology.

The goal of the competition chang-
es slightly each year, but always is based on

rounds where four robots compete head-to—
head to score the most points in a limited
amount of time. This year’s game had robots
scoring points by moving a variety of differ-
ent balls around the playing field. Nerf balls
and Wifile balls were scored by robots col-
lecting them and shooting them into a rotat—
ing goal in the center of the field, much like a
carnival game of skill. Robots could also score
by putting golf balls from their corner of the
field onto a scoring zone on a putting green.
Lastly, robots scored points simply by navigat-
ing some obstacles on the field; large ramps,
bumps, and trapdoor tunnels prevented robots
from traversing the field easily.

0n the first day of competition, ITR
participated in a variety of round-robin match-
es that pitted them against other teams, each
competing for a high average score to benefit
them in the later playoff rounds. After the play-
off rounds began on Saturday morning, all four
of the robots that ITR brought to the competi-
tion succeeded in scoring or moving on to fu-
ture matches.

Roslund, ITR’s oldest remaining ro-
bot, was knocked out after the first round of

Maurie

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playoff matches at the competition after fall—
ing just shy of scoring enough points to move
on. The same fate befell Goliath, one of ITR’s
newer robots. ITR’s Modulus, the team’s new-
est competing robot, advanced to the quarter-
finals of the competition before being defeated.

Icarus, ITR’s flying quadrocoptor ro-
bot, rose above expectations and advanced to
the semifinal matches of the competition after
3 rounds of competitive play against other aer-
ial as well as ground-based robots. After fall-
ing a few points shy of moving on to the finals
matches, ITR’s chance at the main competition
championship came to an end.

After the competition’s final match
ended and a team from UIUC took home
the gold, the final match of ISDC, known as
the demolition round, was set to begin. After
a long two days of points-based competition,
the traditional last match of ISDC is a round
where any robot present at the competition is
welcome to enter the arena, and all of the ro—
bots compete in a battlebots—style fight where
the last robot able to move is declared the win-
ner.

As the demolition round title hold-

ers from the previous ISDC season, the de-
molition round was ITR’s time to shine. Once
again, ITR’s wedge-shaped Goliath took the
field after a few modifications from its drive
team, namely, adding a steel plate to the front
of the robot and removing its fragile manipu-
lator. Soon after the match began, Goliath dis-
abled a robot from Northern Illinois University
as other robots on the field fought each other.
The final two robots standing were ILLINIhili—
ation, a robot from UIUC, and ITR’s Goliath.
After a few minutes of Goliath chasing ILLINI-
hiliation and the later robot hiding under tun-
nels on the field to avoid further damage, ITR’s
Goliath was declared the winner of the ISDC
demolition round for the second consecutive
year.

Illinois Tech Robotics has returned
from their competition season and is now
working on maintaining their robots as well as
completing some outreach events to wrap up
the school year. More information about the
organization can be found on their website, il—
linoistechrobotics.org or by emailing iit.robot'—
ics@gmail.com.

 

( ...,-. car ..
Photos by Ken Bowns