As class assignments go, the final requirement for students in Introduction to Mechatronics was its own special form of March Madness. While more than 200 raucous spectators cheered them on, 16 teams competed to see whose robot would be crowned champion.
Dubbed $uperPAC Monday, a nod to this election year primary season, the session featured tabletop robots such as Bit Romney and (the eventual winner) Michelle Botman. The robots' challenge: collect tokens from a "SuperPAC" zone and deposit them into five boxes—designed to seesaw—representing major primary states. As the tokens accumulated, the seesaws tipped, indicating a primary "victory." The robots that won the most primaries advanced to succeeding rounds.
The competition has become an annual rite of spring for mechanical engineering students who spend the quarter learning how to program a microprocessor, connect sensors to motors and "piece by piece learn all of the elements of a robot," says mechanical engineering professor Tom Kenny.
Friends and family members were invited, producing a standing-room-only crowd in the Peterson Engineering Lab. "This proves engineering can be fun," added Kenny, but the students didn't seem to need persuading.
