Pushing Limits and Innovating: Reflections on the ME 2110 Competition

Last Friday, I had the opportunity to compete in the ME 2110 Competition, a class where students design and program an autonomous robot to perform specific tasks for points. The competition is a single-round elimination bracket (except the first round) where four teams compete in each round, and the top two teams move on to the next round. The ultimate goal is to become the team with the highest number of points by the end of the competition.

Throughout the semester, I invested a significant amount of effort into the competition with the intention of achieving the best possible results. While the teams were chosen randomly, there was an option to choose one partner, but I decided to leave it up to chance. Despite being placed in a team of three against teams of four, I found that my teammate and I had a great connection, and we worked together to push the project to new heights.

One of the most important things we learned during the competition was the significance of planning and thinking ahead. We knew that the different components of the robot would need to interact with one another, so we brainstormed various ideas and debated the pros and cons of each one. As a team, we made sure to test each other's hypotheses thoroughly and point out any flaws to optimize our ideas. We decided to go with a hybrid design, which was unconventional but proved to be advantageous for tasks that required more force while being able to take advantage of the mobile parts in case of misplacement.

We also realized the importance of evaluating our designs and considering the limitations of the components provided. We only had two motors, two solenoids, and two pneumatic actuators, so we needed to be creative and strategic with our use of these components. We identified some of the components that were potential failure points, such as the sensors and the excessive use of mousetraps (as they broke after a few uses), and made sure to account for these in our design.

Rapid prototyping and extensive testing were also crucial to our success. We manufactured and tested our design thoroughly, identifying any inconsistencies and making sure to eliminate them. We discovered that testing extensively was the key to identifying which points failed and which ones didn't, which proved very effective during the final competition.

The competition itself was a roller coaster of emotions. While we performed well during the sprints done in the class section, consistently placing second out of four teams, we faced some setbacks during the final competition. In the first round, we were disqualified due to unfortunate reasons, which was a massive blow to our confidence. However, we were determined to make a comeback and went on to pass the next two rounds. We learned that in scenarios like these, consistency is essential. While luck will always play a role, you can reduce the amount of unluckiness that you'll encounter by being well-prepared and reducing the chances of human error.

Having said that on the round of 16, due to having to compete back to back, we forgot to run through the checklist which caused us to forget to position the robot after boxing. As a result our robot wasn’t centered and didn’t complete some of the tasks as it should have. We missed the boundary by just four points and didn't make it to the later rounds. I was very sad, as my hopes just vanished because of a one inch placement, but I quickly found joy on supporting a friend of mine who, through incredible luck, managed to get second place overall. This made me realized that I was meant to go out that round, and how to do it better next time.

Overall, participating in the ME 2110 Competition was an incredible learning experience that taught me the importance of planning ahead, evaluating designs, rapid prototyping, and consistent testing. These lessons can be applied to any project or situation, and I look forward to implementing them in the future.

Weekly Discovery:

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