Competition day is Saturday May 17th!
The public is welcome.
Location: Ford Engineering Design Building, 2133 Sheridan Rd.
Saturday May 17 2008 Schedule of Events
Competition format, track, and rules: The Challenge
Sponsors of Design Competition: Sponsors
Team names and members: Team Roster
Course syllabus for students participating for credit: Syllabus
2007 Design Competition: Photos | Article in NU Daily | News@NU (video)
What DC is all about
Every spring McC students compete for glory and substantial prizes, running their robots against competitors and a challenging track. This year's competition day will be Saturday May 17.
Teams of students design, build, and program their robots to operate autonomously. Often teams are cross-departmental, and students of all years work together, learning from one another. This year there will be a lot of support provided, so no one should be reluctant to participate for lack of technical expertise. And you can be sure you will gain a lot more in the process. Course credit is available if desired.
Prizes are contributed by our corporate sponsors, so we don't know yet how large the prizes will be. First place in DC2007 carried an award of $4000, split between the two members of team Nomec.
DC2008 will be more technically sophisticated and require more strategy than previous competitions.
Staying informed about DC2008 and robotics at NU - no secrets!
DC2008 is run by its participants and other interested students. You can be both a participant and an organizer. In the spirit of transparency you can keep informed and contribute to planning, deliberations and discussion of rules, etc. The DC2008 organizing committee tends to meet Sundays at 7PM in the Ford B100 Mechatronics Lab. All are welcome. It won't meet every Sunday. Let Yee Hoong Chow know if you want to come to meetings.
Announcements of workshops, dealines, etc are made on the DC2008 email group. To join the DC2008 email group, send a blank email to dc2008-subscribe@googlegroups.com and then click the confirmation link in the email that arrives shortly. If you subscribe with a gmail address you can edit your email preferences (e.g. one email/day max, etc). Archives of the group are at http://groups.google.com/group/dc2008
To stay informed about all robotics-relevant opportunities, you will want to subscribe to NUrobots-subsccribe@googlegroups.com This is an announcements-only group; you won't get a a lot of email traffic from it.
Robotics Club is involved with DC2008, but has its own projects as well (some of which will become infrastructure for next year's DC). It usually meets at 7PM Wednesdays. in the Ford B100 Mechatronics Lab. All are welcome. You can visit its discussion board at http://groups.google.com/group/RoboticsClub
DC2008 Timeline
- November 27 - distribution of quick start packs
- January & February - workshops on electronics, sensing, interfacing, programming, control
- January 24 to February 1 - machine shop training sessions offered
- January 27 milestone - last date to demonstrate success with quick-start pack
- February 29 target - motors run, robot rolls, computer well understood
- March 21 milestone - demonstrate navigating, ball-finding robot in order to proceed
- May 3 milestone - demonstrate complete robot that can find balls and shoot goals
- May 17 - Competition day
- June 6 - Reports due from for-credit students. Last day to request reimbursements for expenses up to $100 (and after May 17).