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| Amy Chandler |
Edward Gunn |
Sheridan Kates |
Warren Bennett |
Four students from CUED took part in this year's IDC (International Design Contest) which has just been held
at MIT,in Boston, Massachusetts. This is a competition in which students from universities around the world
come together to design and build robots. The students are assigned to different teams so that each team is a
mixture of nationalities. They have just two weeks to complete the task,overcoming language and cultural
barriers.Team members live together, going to a workshop on a daily basis. Each team is supplied with the
same kit of parts, design software and workshop facilities. On the final day of the event, the teams take
turns at the controls of their robot in a contest in front of their peers, the public and TV cameras.
 This
year's contest entitled 'Rock and Roll' involved pushing hockey balls and pucks off a contest table into
'scoring bins', combined with pushing the ball-filled pendulums as far from the vertical as possible. Two
robots competed on the table at any one time, trying to collect balls and spin the pendulum, so there was
also a tactical element involved. The Cambridge students were
accompanied by Senior Design Engineer, Peter Long, and his perspective of the competition is related in his
photo diary of the event.
More information is available from Microsoft, a sponsor
of the event, along with Mitsubishi, NHK, PTC, SolidWorks Corporation and Agencia Estado.
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