As the National Robotics Challenge, beginning April 13, looms closer each day, UCA’s senior design team finds themselves in a race against the clock, preparing their robot to place first in the competition for the second straight year.

UCA’s senior design team consists of Nadira Amadou, Colby Haggard, Austin Miller and Will Ward. 

The National Robotics Challenge requires the design teams to build a robot that is able to navigate around an outdoor course as quickly as possible while simultaneously avoiding obstacles laid in its path, completely on its own. 

“All the teams in the competition develop autonomous robots and there aren’t a lot of restrictions on what we can do. So it gives us some freedom as far as building and designing it,” Ward said.

The team has stripped down a radio-controlled car and rebuilt it from scratch by installing a new battery pack, a miniature computer and a camera. 

“The base of the robot itself came from an RC car that we ordered and then we stripped out all of the plastic on top and installed our own chassis where all of the electronics go,” Ward said.

Even though the competition is in April, preparation starts as soon as the school year begins in August. 

“In the fall semester, we ordered the parts we needed for the actual construction of the robot and got everything aligned hardware-wise, and then we began talking about how we actually wanted to code it,” Miller said.

“Once we started playing around with the coding, trying to actually make the robot function on its own, we ran into some hardware issues and we ended up going through a couple of different designs,” he said.

The design team said as soon as all of the parts come in, the actual construction and coding of the robot takes just about the entire school year. 

“It’s a lot of moving threads, starting from the very beginning with the hardware and installing our own parts, seeing how those work, finding flaws in the system and then rooting those out,” Ward said.

“It’s just a constant improvement on all parts of the robot, the system, the hardware, the sensors and the perception. All that good stuff,” Ward said. 

2022 was the first time UCA students participated in the robotics competition and the two teams took home first and third place. 

Miller did not compete last year, but he was able to go because there was an extra spot available. 

“I got to watch the whole competition and anticipate what downfalls we may have and difficulties we need to overcome,” Miller said.

“There was a huge concern last year because of rain. We got lucky because it rained in between our turns, but this year we’re prepared. We made our robot 100% waterproof,” he said.

But even with months of work under their belt, adjustments are still being made to the robot. 

“The problem we are running into now is, we need to find a way to train the robot so that it deploys the autopilot and the autopilot is successful, so that it actually drives the course and doesn’t just drive,” Ward said.

Placing first in the challenge for the second straight year is certainly a motivating factor for the design team, but it is not the driving force for every member. 

“I value the process the students went through,” Lin Zhang, assistant professor of physics and astronomy, said. “They are dedicated to this project and have shown their intelligence and determination.”

The National Robotics Challenge, which began in 1986, is held in Marion, Ohio, and is a three-day event, lasting from April 13 to April 15.