ECU finishes second in national robotics competition
A team of East Carolina University students placed second in the Association of Technology, Management and Applied Engineering (ATMAE) national robotics competition Oct. 28-31 in Las Vegas.
Members of ECU’s robotics team stand with their second-place robot at the ATMAE annual conference in Las Vegas. (Contributed photo)
The finish continued a streak of consistency that has seen the team place no worse than third in the last five national competitions, including a first-place finish in 2019. They also placed second in last year’s competition.
“I think we make it fun,” Darby Waters, the vice president of ECU’s ATMAE student organization, said of the team’s high finishes. “For the most part, everyone has fun when they’re here and working on the robot.”
The team of students from the College of Engineering and Technology worked a couple of nights each week this semester to build the robot they named “Shopping Carrrght.” The computer science, engineering and technology systems students created separate teams to design, program and fabricate the robot to match competition specifications.
“It was prioritizing the main objectives and figuring out what was important and what could be put on the back burner,” said Olivia Sawtell, the club’s president. “I think learning to communicate is a big aspect of it. I think together as a team we’ve gotten a lot better at learning in our positions, learning how to communicate and interact with other team members and learning from previous years.”
As part of the competition, the robot had to capture objects of various sizes, shapes and weights and deposit them into the team’s designated space. However, each robot included a “freeze button” that, when hit by an opposing robot, would stop its operation for 15 seconds, adding an additional element to the competition.
Students with ECU’s ATMAE robotics team examine a part as they build the robot in October. (Photo by Ken Buday)
“The goal was to be a hungry, hungry hippo basically and capture as many objects as you can, and we got the second most objects,” said Heath Faircloth, the team’s fabrication lead.
As a veteran of previous competitions, Faircloth said this one proved enjoyable, especially because the team hit its internal deadlines for building the robot.
“We were actually done on time, and that was pretty huge,” he said. “This one was definitely less stress.”
And it allowed the students to work together as a team and bring what they’ve learned in class to life.
“I think for the club as a whole, we get a lot of hands-on experience,” Waters said. “For computer science, we don’t get to do anything like this in the classroom, so it’s really nice to apply what you’ve learned in the classroom to a hands-on project like this.”
Beyond the competition, the ATMAE conference provided the ECU students a chance to interact with students from across the country, attend workshops, hear from experts in industry and even tour Hoover Dam’s power plant.
“There are a good number of career panels where you can interact with people in industry and hear from them and ask questions,” Sawtell said. “There’s always a keynote speaker who is active in industry who gives you their perspective on the things in their field.”
Members of the team include Sawtell, Waters, Faircloth, Aiden Altman, Hayden Barefoot, Mike Campbell, Caleb Gay, Will Handfield, Alec Lozano, Yasmin Mata-Delgado, Aaron Millhouse, Joshua Nash, Angel Parker, Isaiah Smith, Landry Waters, Hope Wesner, Steven Wofford and Darwin Zelaya. Faculty advisors are Bill McClung and Amy Frank in ECU’s Department of Technology Systems.