Engineering hosts “Robot’s Got Talent” event

 

Riverside, Calif. (Dec. 7, 2016) – Engineering students displayed their robots’ talents at California Baptist University on Dec. 6 during a “Robot’s Got Talent” event hosted by the Gordon and Jill Bourns College of Engineering. The annual event featured the top eight teams in a semester-long competition to construct robots designed to perform specific tasks.

Teams comprising undergraduate students enrolled in Introduction to Engineering courses designed robots from scratch, aiming to satisfy the twofold criteria of creativity and functionality, said Dr. Matthew Rickard, professor and chair of bioengineering at CBU.

“Students start off with a blank slate. It’s a wide open venue as to what students can create. This format really requires the students to design something unique and that can be a challenge,” Rickard said. “The exciting thing is that students in software engineering get to try out their programming skills, electrical engineering students get to deal with electric motors, and there is also mechanical design as well as structures within the robot.”

At the event, teams presented robots that performed various tasks such as writing, surveillance, cleaning, tossing objects, and even dipping an Oreo cookie into milk.

Members of the winning team—Dwayne Symonette, Jorda Miller, Marleigh Saenz and Jason Quijano—designed and programmed their robot to cross over a 5-inch gap. Their design used three motors to power the robot and a two-touch sensor to guide the robot and also activate a platform (underneath the robot) that extended over the gap, allowing the robot to cross to the other side.