Mechatronics: Clash of the Robots (Video)

A lot goes into building a robot that can negotiate its way around a track and carry an upright stick. 

"It's combining control systems, design, electronics, microcontrollng programming - a lot of things," said Prof. Madhusudhan Venkadesan, who teaches the Mechanical Engineering course MENG 390: Mechatronics. The semester ended with "Clash of the Robots: Fast and Stable,” a competition that challented students teams to build a robot that was not only speedy, but able to balance a perilously placed object. The students were limited to certain hardware specifications, but could tweak their machines to maximize performance.

"All of them figured out how to hit the limits of the hardware that they'd been given," Venkadesan said. "They all - in the positive sense of the word - hacked their robots.”