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Best Robotics Competition, 20th October, 2007
On Saturday, October 20, 2007 the University of Cincinnati’s BEST Robotics Competition was held at the Duke Energy Center in downtown Cincinnati. The competition was sponsored in part by the UC College of Engineering. There were 18 high schools from around the region involved in the competition. Three of the schools (Hughes-CAMAS, Western Hills, and Withrow) were Project STEP schools! The objective was for each school to design and build a remotely-controlled device (or robot) to pick up blocks/bottles and place them in a specific storage bin within a 3 minute time limit. Here is the story behind the competition. After taking a year off to solve the laundry quandary (2006 BEST competition), BEST Robotics, Inc. (BRI) returns to space! In 2007, the Mars Rovers—Opportunity and Spirit—began their fourth year of searching for signs of life on Mars. In 2021, a Martian base has been assembled using construction robots and is now receiving supplies before the arrival of astronauts. Automated Supply Vehicles (ASVs) land at the Martian base and must be unloaded using robots. Because of the harsh environment on the Martian surface (temperatures can reach as low as –155 F), the robots have three minutes to perform the following tasks: A) exit the base and drive across the Martian surface; B) drive up onto the ASV and load supplies; C) drive off the ASV and store the supplies in a storage bin at the Martian base. The exits on the Martian base dictate that robots must be within certain size and weight constraints. NASA issued a request for proposals for robots to unload the supply ships. BRI has submitted a proposal and won the contract to provide robots for unloading ASVs. Points were scored by each school based on the number and type of game pieces in scoring position in a team’s scoring bin at the end of a match. Each match was three minutes long and was played with four teams. There was a seeding competition, a semi-final competition, and a final competition.
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