2011 MiniSumo ShipIn Competition

The 2011 MiniSumo Invitational Competition is complete. 

• The scorer's spreadsheet showing the progression of each robot through the competition is attached below.

Plaque awards were earned by GIZMO, built by UNI Chemistry Graduate Student, Kevin O'Connor, EXSPURT, built by Mr. Rick Brooks, of Fort Wayne Indiana, and SULTAN, built by Industrial Technology graduate student Sultan Altamimi.  The plaque awards are pictured below.

For the first time, in four years of trying, a student robot was able to defeat defending champion ExSpurt.

Rick Brooks received the second place overall award 

GIZMO, constructed by Chemistry graduate

student Kevin O'Conner, took first overall.

SULTAN, built by Mr. Sultan Altamimi,

an Industrial Technology graduate student,

received the second placestudent award.

Highlights:

• Our first high school entires:  Dreadnaught and Tiger, from Graettinger-Terril High School.

In this year's (2011) competition Exspurt (Rick Brooks) first sent Gizmo, then Gremlin, to the 'lost once (but could still win it all)' division.  In MiniSumno competition, robots have 'two lives' (not nine), and must be defeated twice to be eliminated from the competition.  In the finals of the 'only lost once' division, Gizmo defeated Gremlin, so Gizmo,  continued forward to the finals, again facing ExSpurt.  In the next round Gremlin had the 'right stuff' and give ExSpurt its first loss of the Invitational.  Gremlin and ExSpurt now each had one loss, so they battled again.  When the dust settled, Gremlin emerged victorious!

Thanks again  to Rick Brooks!  Because of Rick, our competition had an especially exciting finish.  The fact that one of our student-built robots was able to defeat a very high-level robot like ExSpurt made a great impression on all of our students.  And congratulations to Kevin O'Conner, the first UNI student to construct a robot able to hold its ground with ExSpurt.

Student robots who ranked highly in the final competition include:

• Gizmo and Gremlin, built by Kevin O'Conner.  Both of Kevin's robots contained Sharp mid-range sensors two in front and one (Gizmo) or two (Gremlin) in back.  In addition Gizmo and Gremlin each had two sidewise looking near-range sensors.  The goal was to detect an attack from the side, and respond with a quick spin move to keep a scoop toward the opponent.

• Pickle by Byron Tasseff, a well-constructed basic MarkIII robot with standard GWS servos.

• Sully by Sultan Alamimi, a MarkIII style sumo with $15 EXI digital servos located by Sultan.  Lot's of zip.  Sully made it to Round K, finally losing out to Gizmo, the overall winner.  We feel Sultan, and also Sairam Ravi, made quite a bit of progress this semester in gaining control of the digital servos for robotics.

• Ol' Rusty (Jordon Kruse) made it all the way to Round H, finally losing to Gizmo, who eventually became the overall winner.

• Battling Maxo, built by Physics student Paul Bergman, was a well-constructed MarkIII sumo, with standard GWS servos, but also included four Sharp midrange sensors in front, with two looking straight ahead, and two looking out to the sides at 45-degrees.  Battline Maxo made it to Round J, finally losing to Sully.

• Li'l Devil, was operated by Mark Jackson, and won the student competition.  Li'l Devil was constructed from scratch in 2010, by Jeff Riz, including a custom-built frame able to accomodate for Maxon motors..  Mark Jackson is working toward a custom-built H-bridge upgrade for Li'l Devil. 

• Buttermilk (Thomas Mason) did very well in the student competion on April 21, 2011, taking third overall, and reached Round E in the April 28 on-line competition.

Robots with a little extra human interest (and who usually performed well) included:

• JunkBot (by Bradford Holland, a Cedar Falls electronic artist)  JunkBot is a BEAM robot, Junkbot.  This year JunkBot had only edge sensors, permitting it to stay on the arena.  Brad hopes to upgrade JunkBot to include oppoenent sensors.

• Julie by Music Major Steven Rupp.  Julie has complete mirror surround, in an attempt to be a 'stealth' robot.  This required extensive mechanical modification, including a vertically postiion microcontroller board, and a LiPo battery.

• Snookie, by Physics Education major Bryce Peterson.  Snooki was mechanically very novel, having scoops both in front and in back, and two flags which dropped down to act like matador flags distracting the oppenent,and causing the opponent to attack in the wrong direction.

• Ecto-1, by Computer Science major Ben Greer.  Ecto-1 had a lowered, but slighly lengthened structure, requiring starting from a 'front scoop vertical' position.  Ecto-1 had rather good success at reliably 'flopping down' onto the arena, and pushed quite well.

• Honshu, built by Physics Education major Chris Brewer.  Honshu had a novel spring driven scoop which 'popped upward' upon contacting the oppenent.  The goal was to tip the opponent up  and over.

• Eddie, with digital servos, was built by student Sairam Ravi. The motors for Eddie were acquired riginally by Matt Stroh, who purchased two $40 HiTech digital servos, using a John Deere grant.  Eddie was enchanced in 2010 by Jeff Wallace.  Like Sully, Eddie had lots of zip. Eddie had some technical problems during the final competition, but shows much promise.

Basic MarkIII robots, and well implemented.  Every student in the course managed to assemble a well-functioning MarkIII style robot. 

• Shappytron (Dana Schapelle) overcame significant technical problems due to a flawed microcontroller, but Dana persevered and ended up with a very competent MarkIII robot, which did win a round in the on-line competition.

• Cliff Hanger (Geoff Bueker) made it to round G in the final competition, final losing to Genoa.

• Genoa Prime (Patrick Mitchell) made it to Round H in the final competition, finally losing to Sully.

• Jeff Rick has an interesting project, still in progress, in which he is trying to implement basic sumo capability in three robots, one (Achilles) using our New Micros PlugaPod microcontrollers, but for comparison,  a second (Deimos) using a Basic Stamp 1 microcontroller, and a third (Phobos) using a Parallax controller.

Finally, I wish to thank the builders of the visiting robots who add great interest to our event.

• ExSpurt, a four-wheeled sumo, very fast, built by Rick Brooks of Fort Wayne, Indiana
• Black Marauder, a bipedal robot, built by Pete Miles from the Seattle area.
• JunkBot, a BEAM robot built by Cedar Falls, IA, electronic artist, Bradford Holland.
• Dreadnaught and Tiger,
  
  • Built by members of the robotics club at Graettinger-Terril High School, near Fort Doge Iowa. 
    
    • Dreadnaught and Tiger were the first two robots sent to our competition by high school students.  Dreadnaught, additionally, had two victories, making it the first high school student robot to achieve a victory over another sumo in our competition.  The members of the Greattinger-Terril robotics club are listed next:
  • Zach Benedict, who got started with mini-sumo robotics by attending our two-week mini-sumo robotics summer camp during 2010.
  • Andrew Aeilts
  • Jacob Schmitt
  • Brandon Peyton
  • Zach Harris