Goliath Demolishes at Robotics Competition
Illinois Tech Robotics, IIT’s interdisciplinary robotics club, returned to compete in the 28th annual Jerry Sanders Creative Design Competition held every March at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The competition is one of the oldest continuing robotics competitions in the United States and is named after University of Illinois Alumnus and co-founder and longtime CEO of AMD, Jeremiah Sanders III. The objective of the competition is to score the most points in six minutes by placing balls into scoring bins on the course.
The course is set up with four quadrants, with each robot starting within their “home” corner. Robots have to traverse obstacles such as moats, teeter totters, tunnels and doors that cover the course in order to collect the balls they need to score. There are three types of balls used in the competition, foam balls, wiffle balls, and golf balls. Each type has a different point value assigned to it based on how hard it is to collect and place it into the scoring bin. Foam balls and wiffle balls are scored by getting them into a rotating bin and golf balls are scored by putting them into a hole on a putting green. IIT’s highest scoring robot during this part of the competition was Icarus, an RC car tethered to a quad copter, that made it to the semifinals.
After the main competition, a demolition competition is held where the robots demolish each other. IIT’s robot Goliath was the champion of the demolition round last year and was able to uphold it’s title at this year’s competition.
