Millikan Aquamania

The Mission

The fundamental challenge of engineering design is solving problems while meeting basic constraints. This year ME72 students formed teams to design, build, and operate, under manual and/or autonomous control, an amphibious robotic vehicle that can:

• Access the pond under autonomous control, by traversing a ramp and operate in this mode for the first 30 seconds of the competition.
• Successfully navigate under manual (radio) control within the water for the final 3.5 minutes of the match and efficiently navigate within and between the 3 designated zones of the competition area defined by rigid barriers, specific entry points, and a 15° ramp within the Millikan Pond competition zone.
• Secure floating buckyballs and deposit then within scoring zones and designated goals in order to accumulate as many points as possible within each match.
• Prevent opponents from scoring by removing their opponent's buckyballs from scoring zones.
• Survive and withstand 3 rounds of competition, the first two of which determine the four finalists and the third (championship) round where finalists are allowed to select and pair up with an ally of their choice from among the remaining four teams.

Design Challenges

• Each vehicle will start out with a pre-loaded buckyball, at the start of competition and must operate in this mode for the first 30 seconds of the competition while attempting to score points by depositing the pre-loaded buckyball within any of the designated scoring zones or goals.
• Contestants will then spend the final 3.5 minutes of the match scoring as many points as possible by gathering their designated colored (blue or red) buckyballs and large balls from pre-positioned locations and depositing them into designated scoring zones or goals.
• Bonus points will be awarded to an alliance pair if either or both vehicles can safely return back onto the starting platform and remain stationed at this location before the end of 4th period. An additional bonus is awarded if the vehicle can return to this position while holding a ball.
• Teams may also adopt defensive strategies, which may involve removal of an opponent's colored balls from either of the scoring zone.