Posted 08 May 2015
Engineering and sport collide in raucous RoboRugby pitch battle
The Siemens RoboRugby competition has taken place in Belfield with 21 student teams pitting their wits against each other to compete for over €1500 in prize money.
With the knockout stages based upon double-elimination, it took eight rounds and 40 matches before a champion was crowned. Designed by UCD College of Engineering and Architecture students Cormac Fleming, Eoin Lambe and Bill Eviston, Mega Hurts utilised all its power to defeat Beep Sleep Drive Repeat, and its design team of Justin Baniqued, Hugh Maguire and Barry Mulvey, in the final.
Third place was taken by the C3PHOES team comprised of Ailbhe Cunningham and Siofra Naughton. C3PHOES went three games unbeaten before succumbing to the might of Mega Hurts.
Pictured at Siemens RoboRugby Competition: Conor Pearse, Deirdre O'Leary, Ellen LeBas
This year marked the eleventh of the competition and saw 62 students divided across 21 teams go metal-to-metal on a custom designed game table. In order to score, the robots had to move balls from around the table into scoring zones at both ends.
Each robot was designed from a standard kit and teams were required to programme their robots to act autonomously as no interfering was allowed once each game had started.
The competition itself was a key assessment component for the Robotics Design Project offered through the BSc in Engineering. Most of those who took part were first year students, with RoboRugby offering them an opportunity to put the sum of their learning to the test.
Brian Mulkeen of the UCD School of Electrical, Electronic and Communications Engineering believes that the competition “challenges engineering students to think conceptually and strategically and develop the skills that will be vital in their professional skills. Each year I’m impressed by the range of designs the students develop and the level of ingenuity applied to the designs.”
(Produced by UCD University Relations)
