As in previous years, the European First Tech Challenge was held in Eindhoven (The Netherlands) on the 1, 2 and 3 April. 44 robots entered the mechanical and robotic design competition from around Europe, divided into two groups of 22, and the ROBOTEK team came 7th in its group.
The team is comprised of 7 students from Mondragon University and this great project is sponsored by Fagor Automation, Mondragón Assembly and Danobat Group, amongst others.
They presented a 4-wheel drive prototype made of aluminium and plastic profiles, and all of its accessories were machined by the students themselves using Fagor Automation CNCs.
The robot is comprised of 3 main mechanical systems: the chassis where the drive system is located for movement along the track, the ball collection and launching system with ground buckets, and the hook system for lifting the robot above the ground, and other minor subsystems to meet competition requirements. Added to which is the electronics aspect of the motors (electric and servo), controllers, battery, WIFI control via Android mobiles… and the Robot programming in Java.
The championship constitutes a new means of learning scientific-technological concepts where factors such as creativity, originality and teamwork are valued, whilst promoting personal initiative and comradeship. “They all volunteer, its an extracurricular activity but a lot of what they do is covered in the classroom, and therefore it is a complimentary activity” says Mikel García, engineering professor.
This edition had two objectives: firstly a 30 second period where the robot had to autonomously press a button to sound a siren, and place some plastic parts into a basket. During the subsequent minute and a half, a joystick was used to guide the robots to pick up and place as many balls and buckets as possible into a basket, and to hang from a bar. At the end of each match, the points were totalled for each game.
From Fagor Automation, Congratulations to you all!