Brief Design Contest History
This year is the 20th year of the contest.
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- Robots battle for points by placing colored disks and hoops in and round box goals. Careful attention is given to puting scoring the object in a goal lit with the same color which randomize at determined intervals.
- Chair: Jeff Keith
- Robots battle for points by placing balls on a rippled-surface bridge and shooting baskets in their opponents' bases.
- Chair: Jeff Keith
- Robots battle for points by placing balls on a rippled-surface bridge and shooting baskets in their opponents' bases.
- Co-Chairs: Christos Bais & Doug Johnson
- Robots battle for points by collecting tetris-shaped blocks and assembling them into a puzzle in their home base.
- Co-Chairs: Christos Bais & Doug Johnson
- Robots battle for points by collecting multi-colored balloons and bringing them back to their home base.
- Chair: Jason Mitchell
- Teams battle for points by collecting bocce balls and a bowling ball and bringing them back to their home areas.
- Chair: Shang Koo
- Crawl your way through a maze and disarm 4 "nuclear devices."
- Chair: Adam Lubchansky
- Traverse a multilevel multi-environmental course and rescue 3 hostages along the way. Bring the hostages to safety at the end of the course.
- Chair: Stephen Hunia
- Race through obstacle course and complete objectives to win. Field consists of 3 15 feet by 15 feet interconnected stages.
- Chair: Chris George and Brad Bozeman
- Collect foam blocks for points (positive and negative). Store blocks in designated "home base" areas for even greater points. "Gem" located on upper platform had huge point value. Field similar to previous year without the gates and with a pedestal on the central platform for the gem.
- Chair: Elise Sivilay
- Collect foam blocks for points and store in home bases for greater point values. Do anything to prevent others from collecting blocks. 10th anniversary of the contest and most competitive year we've seen. Refined things greatly from the first year in anticipation of the 10th anniversary celebration. Field similar to the previous year with the addition of movable gates on the upper platform.
- Chair: Chris George
- First incarnation of the block collecting idea. Blue blocks had certain point value and orange blocks had greater value. Storing blocks in designated home base areas increased the value of the blocks. Large field with home base platforms in each of the 4 corners and a central platform in the middle. Collapsing ramps to the central platform.
- Chair: Chris George and Josh Moore
- Robots all had velcro-coated domes on top and fired velcro-covered ping-pong balls at each other. Positive points for hits you make; negative points for hits on you. 32 feet by 32 feet field with rough terrain.
- Chair: Kathy Cheng
- Contest took place on a 32 feet by 32 feet pool table. Contestants designed robotic billiard balls and competed to knock each other into the pockets.
- Chair: Burak Tombuloglu
1993 - Chair: Burak Tombuloglu
1992 - Chair: Burak Tombuloglu
Prior to the 1994 competition, I don't know all the details because I wasn't around. They did a "Golf Cart Challenge", racing remote-controlled robot carts around some cones. One year they did some sort of "Battle of the Ants" and had competitions between small robots.
Another year the aim of the contest was to retrieve a foam block at the end of a cone obstacle course. It was one of the first years of the contest, and the rules weren't very well defined. One guy walked in when his round had already started, watched as all these people were weaving their robots through the cones, set down his robot, and hit 1 button. A tethered harpoon shot out over the cones, hit the block, and reeled it back to his robot. He won the contest, and the rest of the contestants weren't very pleased.
Chris George