Student newspaper of Illinois Institute of Technology since 1928

Real steel:

By Allen Baker
TECHNEWS WRITER

The roaring of spectators The crash
of angled steel on Lexan plates The mixing
aromas of sizzling pizza and smoking lithium,
polymer batteries The sharp hiss of pressure
ized pneumaticsl

This is the twentyefifth annual Ierry
Sanders Design Competition Hosted by the
University of Illinois at UrbanaeCZhampaign
and sponsored by Advanced Micro Devices,
this contest draws robotics teams from schools
all over the Midwest Among the colleges that
regularly attend are both the Chicago and
UrbanaeCZhampaign campuses of the Univere
sity of Illinois, Valparaiso University, and, of
course, Illinois Institute of Technology Just
one of many attractions at UIUC’s Engineering
Open House, the Competition has occurred
yearly since 1987, making it one of the oldest
robotics competitions in America

This is where a group of twentyefive
IIT students chose to spend the past weekend
Instead of catching up on sleep, studying for
impending midterm exams, or toiling away on
the local Minecraft server, they instead opted
to hole themselves up in an aging basketball
court and work unceasingly from dawn until
dusk to wring out the last kinks from their pref
cious robotsl They did not do it for the chance
to skip classes, the generous monetary prizes,
or even for the traditional dinner at China,
town Buffet They did it to bring honor and
glory to their school

But they also do it for thrillsl One
who attends JSDC shall witness engineering
in its purest form, unbound from sterile laboe
ratories and droning professorsl Rather than
gazing on from a distant seat in a lecture hall,
participants are flung into roiling pits where
problems strike robots like thunderbolts
and solutions are hashed out with generous

amounts of hot glue and zipetiesl Entire source
code files are rewritten on the fly and every
inch of electrical wiring probed with multimee
tersl

For IIT’s valiant robotics team, 117
linois Tech Robotics, these days of chaos are
nothing new Since first joining the competie
tion many years ago, ITR has excelled on the
battlefield with its innovative machines The
oldest surviving specimen is the RMS Dick
Roslund, which has claimed victory in the are,
na twice in the past three years

Its stellar performance can be attrib
uted to its mechanum wheels, which allow it to
strafe and spin on the spot, and effective ma,
nipulators designed to capture and score game
pieces with astonishing speed and accuracy
The other members of ITR’s lineup for this
year’s competition included Fenrir, a fearsome
twoewheeled beast, Penguin, the only aerial roe
bot in the entire competition, and Reaper, the

technewsiit.com

Opi ion 2
Campus 3-!
AErE 9
The Slipstick 10
Sports 11

 

students fight for victory at JSDC

newest addition to the fleet

Spectators can always count on ITR
to deliver a fantastic show, and this year was no
exception All four robots gave their best in the
numerous matches throughout the two days

Roslund tore through all qualify,
ing matches to gain a place in the final match,
where it earned fourth place after an especially
furious matchl During the demolition round
that always follows the distribution of prizes,
Fenrir spun and smashed into competitors
with the force of a thousand sunsl

Enticed by the exciting events that
“IIT’s best kept secret," gets to bear witness
to? Do the fires of engineering burn within?
Illinois Tech Robotics is always looking for
bright and eager minds to bring fresh ideas to
the table so they can chew them up and spit
them back out Email them at robotics@iitledu
or visit wwwillinoistechroboticslorg for more
information.

 

P170 tos by Kari Bowns, Ting Wong, & Emilie Wong