Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Mellon University's 14th annual 'mobot' -- that is, mobile robot -- races took place on Friday on a downhill campus course that stretched from Doherty Hall to Wean Hall. Robotic contestants had to be small enough to squeeze through 14 gates that were 18 inches high by 18 inches wide.
The gates had to be entered in the correct sequence, which was relatively easy for the first eight because all the mobot had to do was follow a white line. But for the last five, the white line branched off and the bot had to be smart enough to make the correct choices. Gate locations were announced 48 hours before the race.
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Teams of undergraduate students, graduate students and other members of the Carnegie Mellon campus community ready their creations to navigate the 14-gate slalom course. In each category, the mobot that can go through the greatest number of gates in the shortest time wins.
Misumi USA, a subsidiary of Japan's Misumi Corp, offered each contestant $100 (£50) of factory automation components. Misumi sells components for motion control, including lenses, camera adapters and hardware for linear motion and rotary motion. It also sells a kit that uses an infrared LED to illuminate the white line used in the race, and a phototransistor to detect it. But the kit vehicle isn't actually smart enough to navigate the course without further work. Sunlight offers another strong source of infrared light, for instance, and the kit vehicle isn't capable of traversing sidewalk cracks.
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One undergraduate contestant in the Carnegie Mellon mobot races entered a buggy-like contraption that failed to get past the first hill.
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Creating a mobot with sensors that can follow a white line and navigate through gates is harder than it might seem. Out of 11 total contestants in all categories, only five managed to make their way through the first gate. This mobot, with a front end constructed from a Rice Krispies box, was not one of them.
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The Carnegie Mellon mobot races emphasise accuracy over speed: The bot that makes its way through the most gates wins. Only if there's a tie for the number of gates achieved does the time matter. Each run, however, is limited to a maximum of five minutes.
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The 'Pikachu' mobot made its way through eight of 14 gates, with a time of 2 minutes 54 seconds. Designed by Carnegie Mellon alumnus John Palmisano, it won the judge's choice award this year.
The first prize in the undergraduate category went to the 'GTG' team, whose mobot went through eight gates in 3 minutes 7 seconds. Second prize went to 'Low United' that finished four gates in 49 seconds. No undergraduate robot finished the entire slalom course.
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The only mobot to make its way through all 14 gates, which meant navigating hills and deciding which path to follow when the road branched, was created by Michael Licitra, a research engineer at Carnegie Mellon, and Jeff McMahill, a robotics engineer at the school's Robotics Institute.
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This is the Mike-and-Jeff team, a pair of Carnegie Mellon staff engineers, walking back from the first of three trials. In two cases, the speedy robot managed to slalom through all 14 gates, even setting a new course record of 50.71 seconds. On the third try -- perhaps after its creators tried to dial up the speed to break their own record -- it went off the course at gate eight.
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The rules of the mobot races let anyone affiliated with Carnegie Mellon, including children of staff, faculty and alumni, enter the races. Two children entered this year's competition. Prizes are $1,000 (£500) for first place, $500 for second place and $250 for third place.
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This is the 'Pikachu' mobot, which won the judge's choice award, after navigating its way through eight of 14 gates. In this photograph, it's shown just before it failed to take the right turn needed to go through gate nine. The reason seemed to be that its momentum was too high after going down the slope -- with a 46-inch vertical drop -- and it didn't slow down enough.
Adding to the complexity of the course is that it's run over an outdoor sidewalk, meaning that the course conditions can vary because of gaps in the concrete sidewalk, the reflectivity of the stripe due to humidity, shadows caused by bright sunlight, and lack of shadows due to an overcast sky.
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This is the underground lair of the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Club in the basement of the student center. Some of the club's current projects include a robot to play table games ("Our ultimate goal is to create an unbeatable air hockey playing robot.") and the RobOrchestra concept that aims to create a robotic band. Penny-whistle and trombone robots have already been completed.
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