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 The robots, designed by student teams at the Worcester Polytechnic
Institute, will be racing a lineup ranging from commercial available
machines weighing hundreds of pounds to remote control cars
jerry-rigged by teenage hobbyists.
The 100-meter out-and-back course, where the robots will accept a
cup full of confetti at the turnaround, has no ambitions of
attracting competitors on par with those in the U.S. Defense
Department-funded Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Robotics
Challenge, where some of the world's top minds in the field will
show off creations that cost tens of millions of dollars.
Rather, the competition sponsored by robotics company Vecna
Technologies is part of a growing breed of lower-key robot races
sprouting up across the United States that experts contend could
play a powerful role in attracting young students into the fields of
science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
"It's a fantastic trend; I'm all for it," said Massachusetts
Institute of Technology associate professor Russ Tedrake, who helped
lead the school's fourth-place DARPA team in 2014.
Races like Vecna's, which he is not involved in organizing, they
seem to be drawing people in to the field, he added.
Competitions also help spin off new ideas that can grow into
practical inventions, experts said. The fleet of self-driving cars
that Google Inc has been testing relies on ideas generated at an
earlier DARPA race, for instance.
WARMING UP WALRUS
On Friday afternoon at Worcester's campus about 40 miles (64
kilometers) west of Boston, 22-year-old senior Brendan McLeod and
four classmates were working on their entry, nicknamed "Walrus," for
Water and Land Remote Unmanned Search.
Their project was not designed for speed, McLeod admitted. The
80-pound (36-kilogram) device features four tracked flipper-like
appendages that allow it to swim, climb stairs or muster a brisk
walking pace on flat ground.
"We think we can expect to do (the 100-meter race) in about a minute
and a half," McLeod said.
The robot, which features three cameras, has enough processing power
to navigate the parking-lot course on its own and is so solidly
built that team advisor Michael Gennert, who directs the school's
robotics engineering program, joked that it could run over a smaller
entrant that stopped in its way.
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The tank-like Walrus was designed as a senior project well before
Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Vecna Technologies decided to host
the event. Other entrants will be lower-tech, said Debbie Theobald,
the company's chief executive.
"To keep the barrier for entry really low for this year, the robots
don't have to be autonomous," Theobald said.
Worcester's other team will be entering a robot named the Hydro Dog,
which will bound over the course on four legs powered by what
assistant research professor Marko Popovic called "artificial
muscles."
The rubbery tubes fill with water and then release it, using the
change in shape that results to move the 35-pound (16 kilogram),
knee-high robot's aluminum legs. The four students working on the
Hydro Dog, however, were still determining what speed it might
achieve.
Senior Thane Hunt, 23, said he was looking forward both to trying
their creation in the contest and to seeing what strategies other
teams had come up with to navigate the course.
Rival Worcester team adviser Gennert said he hoped more contests
like Vecna's would sprout up in the coming years.
"The competitions have a number of positive outcomes," he said. "You
inspire future generations of students."
(Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)
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