First-year engineers showcase their skills at 26th annual robot competition
More than 220 first-year engineering honors students faced off in the Recreation and Physical Activity Center (RPAC) on April 9 to discover which team created the top bot.
The Ohio State University College of Engineering’s 26th annual Fundamentals of Engineering for Honors Robot Competition is the culmination of a semester-long design-and-build project that challenges first-year engineering honors students to design, build and program a fully autonomous robot vehicle in just nine weeks.
The competition is part of the Fundamentals of Engineering for Honors (FEH) program, an optional, accelerated course sequence that provides students with a foundation in engineering principles that are necessary for success throughout their academic careers. Engineering Education Senior Lecturers Paul Clingan and Brooke Morin are the coordinators for the two FEH courses and lead organizers of the 2022 robot competition.
“This project gives students the opportunity to engage in engineering by using the fundamental problem-solving skills we spent the year focusing on—defining, representing, planning, implementing, evaluating—as part of a challenging, collaborative team project,” said Clingan. “After finishing the project, students feel successful and recognize this experience should have them well-prepared to handle whatever they might next encounter.”
As hundreds of spectators watched in person and online, 57 student teams competed in both a round-robin and a single-elimination tournament competition to determine which student-built robot could best execute the required tasks.
This year’s competition simulated a restaurant that needed robot assistance to meet increased demand. The fully autonomous robots had just two minutes to perform specific tasks, including flipping a burger, selecting a requested song on the jukebox, putting away a used dining tray, sliding an order ticket and flipping a lever to dispense the correct amount of soft-serve ice cream.
“This competition is a significant challenge for first-year students in that it is complex, open-ended, and of long duration,” Clingan explained. “This is a ‘real-world’ problem in that there are no known solutions. It is up to the students to create them, which is what makes it exciting.”
Thanks to corporate sponsors and the Ohio State Department of Engineering Education, more than $15,000 in scholarships were awarded to winning teams who were scored on their design and how well their robots performed in individual and head-to-head runs.
The head-to-head tournament champion team of Jacob McLachlan, Tommy Polakowski, Jasper Reckamp and Brandon Young each received a $250 scholarship courtesy of Shell’s corporate sponsorship. Also dubbed the “most consistent in round-robin tournament play” winners, each team member received an additional $250 scholarship from the Department of Engineering Education.
“It was a really useful engineering project. We got to apply all the engineering skills we've learned so far, like coding, CAD and the engineering design process,” said Tommy Polakowski, a mechanical engineering major. “It was challenging at times, but winning the exciting head-to-head competition against other robots made it all worth it. Even if we hadn't won, at the end of the day we still would've been proud of ourselves and our design.”
Other corporate sponsors included American Electric Power, APTIV, GE Aviation, ITA Audio Visual Solutions, Noxgear, Pratt & Whitney, Priority Designs and P&G.
Each team of three to four students also had to adhere to budgetary and technical constraints. The robots are limited in size to a 9-square-inch footprint and are constructed of various materials, including sheet metal, PVC, acrylic, plywood and miscellaneous hardware components.
The competition scenario and 12-square-foot course that simulates a diner-style restaurant were designed and built by the program’s student teaching assistants, who are also former Fundamental of Engineering for Honors (FEH) program participants. A new theme, track and tasks are developed each year.
“Without our undergraduate and graduate teaching assistants, this project would not exist,” said Paul Clingan. “They design, build, program and troubleshoot these courses. They’re also in the classroom with our first-year students every day, teaching them, mentoring them and challenging them. Showing them how to grow, be college students and be engineers.”
Other head-to-head tournament championship awards:
Second place: Andy Clemens, Jacob Krauss, Spencer Pulte and Brandon Snedeker
Third place: Sam Arigo, Ace Baum, Alex Burlison and Alex Schuler
Fourth place: Connor Lenigar, Arushi Sharma, Joong Soo Shin and Caroline Weisgerber
Most consistent in round-robin tournament:
Second place: Ethan Chung, Samhith Kethireddy, Ian Kwiatkowski and Will Ma
Third place: Nick Cyranek, Stephen Gallagher, Zachary Hahn and Nic Perkoski
Fourth place: Andy Clemens , Jacob Krauss, Spencer Pulte, Brandon Snedeke
Outstanding achievement in engineering:
First place: Nishtha Jindal, Ashton Keller, Hazuki Nakamura and Sam Tilford
Second place: Henry Redder, Aadit Shah, Toby Simpson and A.J. Varchetti
Third place: Carson Dickey, Ben Froman, Aerin Krebs and Owen Vogelpohl
Fourth place: Lauren Klein, Chase Oberg, Khushi Patel and Ethan Sernoffsky
Outstanding achievement in innovation and aesthetics:
First place: Ally Das, Xander Doom, Madison Harr and Christine Li
Second place: Warren Alphonso, Connor Anderson, William Comer and Nolan Meister
Third place: Robert Bruns, Caleb Joo, Jack Kern and Anutam Srinivasan
Fourth place: Thomas Giles, Elijah Lind, Sawyer Ramsey and Evan Shaw
by Candi Clevenger, College of Engineering Communications, clevenger.87@osu.edu
