Month: October 2012

Robotics Contest: It’s Official!

jconrad / / Arduino, Robotics

Atmel has posted the official press release at it’s website.   Here’s an abstract:

Three Winners Announced for Atmel Robotics Contest

San Jose, CA, October 4, 2012 – Atmel® Corporation (NASDAQ: ATML), a leader in microcontroller and touch solutions, today announced winners for the Atmel Robotics Contest, sponsored by the Atmel University Program. Judges challenged the teams to bring Mel, the University Program mascot, inspired robots to life at the World Maker Faire 2012 in Queens, New York, on Saturday, September 29.
Congratulations to the three winning teams:
  • Third place: Roger Tang, Ali Kocaturk, Sam Baran and Syed Sakib from the University of Texas, Austin for their robot, DWAI (Don’t Worry About It)
  • Second place: Kristina Pardo, Andrea Fant, Evdokiya Kostadinova and Haris Khan from Furman University for their robot, Aldo
  • First place: Ryan Huston from Folsom Lake College for his robot, Pinhead
The four judges were Alf-Egil Bogen, Atmel AVR® microcontroller co-inventor, Brian McLaughlin,GeekDad’s editor, Eric Weddington, Atmel’s open source community manager and Bob Martin, Atmel’s MCU applications manager.

An announcement has also been posted on the Furman News and Events page.

Robotics Contest: Still waiting for the press release from Atmel!

jconrad / / Uncategorized
We are still waiting for the official press release announcement of the contest results from Atmel–they promise it will be online “very soon!”  In the meantime, I’m getting lots of questions along the lines of “What were the rules of the contest?…What was Aldo supposed to do?…”
Here’s the answer regarding the playing field task:
The task protocol that Atmel established for the competition was designed to emulate a warehouse inventory robot.   Four balls–two ping pong balls and two golf balls–are lined up on an array of pedestals.   The order of the four balls is random, and at the outset is unknown by the robot.  The robot is required to navigate autonomously (following an optical sensor) to the first pedestal position where it stops (another optical sensor), picks up the ball, and determines whether the ball is a ping pong ball or a golf ball (using a load cell sensor to weigh the ball).   The robot then navigates a somewhat tortuous path to drop the ping pong balls in one receptacle bin, and the golf balls in a different bin.  The robot then returns to the second pedestal, etc. and repeats this procedure until all four balls are retrieved, sorted, transported in delivered.  Again, this entire procedure is done autonomously by the robot.
The students put on a quick reprise of the Maker Faire performance for a photoshoot this afternoon.  The Furman photographer was shooting only stills, but I shot a brief amateur video clip: