The recent unusual rainy conditions disrupted the initial plans to conduct the 40th annual ME 72 Engineering Design Competition on Beckman Lawn. Nevertheless, the students of ME 72, along with their TAs and instructors, adapted to the change, successfully hosting the culminating competition in the Jim Hall Design and Prototyping Lab, located in the same subbasement area of the Eudora Hull Spalding Laboratory of Engineering where the students dedicated countless hours constructing, testing, and refining the robots that competed for victory on Tuesday, March 11.
The shift in venue and subsequent spatial limitations came with the added advantage of enabling the entire event to be livestreamed and recorded by Academic Media Technologies.
Annually, third-year mechanical and civil engineering students enroll in ME 72, a two-term, project-focused course that culminates in the engineering design competition. The specifics of the challenge differ each year. Last year, participants designed blimps that participated in “airship quadball.”
What was the objective this year? Bot Hockey—with a unique Caltech spin.
Course advisor Michael Mello (PhD ’12), a teaching professor of mechanical and civil engineering, drew influence for this year’s challenge from the existing bot hockey community. He tasked co-instructors Paul Stovall and Trent Wilson with crafting and constructing a 20 x 12 foot street hockey rink featuring a ferromagnetic surface for the event.
Commencing in October, five teams, each comprising five or six students, began drafting designs for a trio of robots capable of fulfilling the roles of goalie, shooter, and midfielder in an exhilarating street hockey game. The students were encouraged to affix magnets to the undersides of their robots to enhance their bots’ traction on the metallic rink.
“It fundamentally alters the maneuverability as well as the kinetics and kinematics of the activities on this (ferromagnetic) surface. So that’s our twist,” Mello remarked at the event’s commencement. “We’re not aiming to change everything, but we are Caltech, and we must approach things in our own unique way.”
The students devoted numerous afternoons and weekends to working in the workshop under the supervision of TAs, who themselves had participated in the ME 72 competition the previous year, in order to bring their designs to fruition. This year’s competition involved substantial machining, as students employed water jet cutters, 3D printers, lathes, and automated equipment like computer numerical control machines to fabricate, print, and refine their hockey robots.
On Tuesday, the event resembled a blend of an episode of BattleBots and a street hockey match. Robots of various designs maneuvered around the rink, collided with competitors, and sought to defend their goal while attempting to drive or shoot a puck into the opposing team’s net.
The five teams, with names such as Five Guys Plus Fries and Wayne Botzky, engaged in a round-robin tournament style, with each team facing off against another for five minutes. Different teams showcased various strategies and advantages during the competition. Some crafted their three robots with as many redundant components as possible, while others developed entirely distinct robots for each player role. Several goalie bots incorporated netting or other protective barriers to block incoming pucks. Some shooter bots featured built-in mechanisms that allowed them to intake the puck and quickly fire it back towards the goal. Other bots were equipped with scrapers at the front to help them push pucks and anything else obstructing their path, often with great force.
As the tournament progressed, increasingly more debris—pieces of acrylic, screws, and bearings from the robots—accumulated on the rink. Some repairs were executed in the rink using duct tape. At one point, a student severed a dangling motor from one of the robots, allowing the game to proceed. However, each team was also allocated two five-minute timeouts to use as required. Moreover, as the event’s long-time master of ceremonies Gunnar Ristroph (BS ’06) highlighted, relocating the competition to the mechanical engineering workshop granted all teams “home court advantage,” offering them the opportunity to repair bots on the spot at the workbenches where they had been assembled.
Ultimately, THE VROOMBAS secured third place with their remarkably dependable circular robots likened to vacuum robots. The final round culminated between the Puckboiz, who had remained undefeated throughout the day, and the Penguinators. The teams ended in a 1-1 tie, leading to a sudden death face-off of two minutes. In the last ten seconds of the match, a Puckboiz robot maneuvered the puck into the rival goal without opposition, clinching the victory.
“The championship, the trophy, everything goes to Puckboiz!” exclaimed an exuberant Ristroph. The victorious team included undergraduate students Kyrillos Bastawros, Kyle Chen, Alexis Herfurth, Randy Ngo, Kristina Sevier, and Audrey Wong.
Reflecting on the entire experience, members of the Puckboiz team noted that ME 72 transcends mere academics or assignments; it embodies a tradition rooted in the value of communication and perseverance. As they approached the final round, one of the Puckboiz’s two shooter bots experienced a broken 3D-printed shooting mechanism, and another bot eventually lost some steering capability. “But we kept pushing forward. We were determined to win,” Sevier stated. “All our dedication—the sleepless nights, collaboration on countless aspects—the fact that it resulted in success, and in this manner, was truly a gift.”