Mini-robot wars

The Engineering, Computer Science and Visual Arts Integrated Complex atrium will be the venue for a death-match between “cheetahs” and “gazelles” on December 10, starting at 10 a.m.

Since 2007, students registered in Associate Professor Nawwaf Kharma’s third year Computer/Electrical Engineering Team Design Project course have combined in groups of four to build a robot that performs a specific task.

After the competition, all robots are put into the ring for a final “king of the hill” round. | Photo by Dmitry Rozhdestvenskiy.

The idea of this course is to let the students create multidisciplinary teams to solve a complex engineering problem.

This semester, students were taking their inspiration from the jungle. “The cheetahs chase the gazelles and fight other cheetahs,” explains Design Project Specialist Dmitry Rozhdestvenskiy, who is responsible for the technical part of the course and has been helping students with this assignment since it began.

“The gazelle runs away and avoids any collisions with the cheetahs.” He adds that in past years, students have built mine sweeping, street-racing, maze-solving and soccer-playing robots.

The competition pits robot against robot until there is only one left standing. “But the winner is not solely determined by the maximum number of rounds won; the best time and lowest robot cost factor into the final robot performance score,” says Rozhdestvenskiy.

Related link:
• Concordia Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering