The University of Illinois and Advanced Micro Devices proudly present the 19th annual AMD Jerry Sanders Creative Design Competition, held during Engineering Open House on March 10th and 11th. The contest is sponsored by Advanced Micro Devices and held in honor of W.J. "Jerry" Sanders, an alumnus of the University of Illinois. Advanced Micro Devices endorses this contest to inspire excellence in engineering.
Each year, engineering students of all disciplines build robots to achieve predefined objectives and compete for more than $5,000 in prizes. This year's objective requires robots to place their team's plastic balls on a rippled-surface bridge in the middle of the course to score points, or to shoot baskets in their opponents' bases while defending their own base to prevent other teams from scoring baskets.
The competition promotes engineering disciplines and offers students a chance to demonstrate their technical abilities and creativity while applying knowledge learned in engineering courses. Overall, the design competition presents a well-rounded multi-disciplinary engineering challenge to future engineers.
April 27, 2006 - I've added pictures of the 2006 Competition to the Multimedia page.
February 14, 2006 - Some updates have been made to the Course Info page regarding the pedestals.
February 6, 2006 - The transcript of the 2nd Q&A session has been added to the Q&A Transcripts page.
January 31, 2006 - A diagram of the point zones for scoring baskets has been added to the Course Info page.
January 20, 2006 - New pictures of the modified overpass and underpass have been added to the Course Info page.
December 12, 2005 - Updates have been made to the Objective and Course Info pages regarding changes made from last year's course.
December 1, 2005 - Due to the website problems we've had for the past week, the Checkpoint 1 deadline has been extended one week to Friday December 9th.
November 11, 2005 - The transcript of the AIM chat for last night's Q&A session has been uploaded in the new Q&A Transcripts section. Issues brought up in the live meeting are summarized near the end.
November 10, 2005, #2 - The problem with the Engineering Council database system has been fixed. Registration is active and working. The deadline for all teams to register online is still November 16, 2005.
November 10, 2005 - The Engineering Council Database system, which we use for team registration, is currently offline. We expect it to be fixed over the weekend, but for the time being, registration (and associated team viewing functions) is down.
October 11, 2005 - A candidate set of rules rules has been uploaded on the rules page. Most of the rules remain unchanged from last year, with perhaps some rewordings to make them clearer. Rules that have been changed or added are underlined. We will be taking suggestions for changes and/or additions up until the first Q&A session. Rules will be finalized the following week. Please send suggestions to .
September 20, 2005 - Updated rules will be available sometime in mid-October. And, the moment you've all been waiting for, Registration is up!
September 3, 2005 - I've begun reworking the site for the 2006 competition. The Calendar page has been updated with new dates, some of which are still tentative. Registration is not up yet. Stay tuned.