Raiders of the Lost Can

The Mission

The fundamental challenge of engineering is solving problems while meeting basic constraints. This year ME72 students formed teams to design, build, and operate, under manual and/or autonomous control, one or more air or ground vehicles that can:

• Autonomously (not under direct radio control) retrieve their empty soup can from their restricted zone, one of two four-foot cubes near the opposite basketball hoops
• Place their can nearest the center of a five-foot platform in the middle of the court
• Prevent the opposing team from placing their can on the platform

The team whose can is closest to the center of the platform at the end of the heat wins.

Design Challenges

• The double-elimination competition is divided into rounds. Each round consists of 4-minute heats among the remaining teams, where a heat consists of a head-to-head contest between two teams. After two losses, a team is eliminated from the competition.
• Access to the platform is either by climbing steeply inclined ramps or by air. One pair of ramps is covered with steel sheeting, while the other pair is covered with wooden cleats. The ramps are inclined at an angle that makes preventing slipping difficult.
• A team's vehicle may not enter the opposing team's restricted zone while the zone contains the opposing team's can
• Vehicles may block or upset opposing vehicles, but may not inflict intentional damage.
• Vehicles may steal the opposing team's can.