Ingenuity, creativity, teamwork, and lots of patience were critical elements as first-year electrical and computer engineering students were introduced to the principles of engineering while “competing” in a fun-filled RobOlympic Pentathlon event that culminated this fall’s Engineering Practice course.

Thirty student teams spent several weeks designing, programming, and testing autonomous- or remote-controlled robots that scored points in the following events:

• Long Jump: After completing a 36-inch runway, the robot “jumped” into a landing box, with points awarded based on the accuracy of each jump within six landing zones.
• Shot Put: After spinning three times, the robot released a golf ball toward a target area, with points awards for length and accuracy from the release point.
• Hurdles: Robots used line sensors to complete one lap around the track within 60 seconds, “jumping” (by illuminating two LED signals) to clear 10 hurdles encountered along the way.
• Soccer: Robots scored as many goals as possible within 90 seconds after picking up balls that were scattered throughout the playing field.
• Gymnastics Floor Exercise: Robots used line sensors to follow a pentagon-shape course, performing two “maneuvers” whenever encountering each of 10 designated markers on the playing field.

While gold, silver, and bronze medals were presented to the top-scoring teams in each event, along with an overall pentathlon champion, the results didn’t factor into student’s grades for the class. 

“Getting students, many of which didn’t know each other nine weeks ago, working together to solve challenging problems is a building block for the rest of their Rose-Hulman careers. It’s nice to see each team having some success,” said department head Mario Simoni, PhD, one of the Engineering Practice course’s four professors.     

A can-do attitude paved the way for Mateo Cirino, Aaron Feng, and Caeden Swanner to overcome its team name – Fail Team 6 – to be the overall champion. They won in the floor exercise event while placing second in the soccer event and racking up points in the shot put event.

“We never gave up and kept picking ourselves up after we failed,” stated Swanner, an electrical engineering major. 

In fact, it took until the night of the competition – on the last day of fall quarter classes – for the team’s robot to finally complete the floor exercise routine.

“It never, ever ran right until tonight. We’ll call it a miracle that we won the event,” said Cirino, another electrical engineering student.   

Finishing a close second overall was the Boombots team that featured the creativity of Andrew Jansen, Tyler Pinedo, and Gabe Stille. They won the long jump event, were second in floor exercise, and placed third in shot put. Meanwhile, the team of Joshua Doyle, Peter Fields, and Jonah Loper was third overall by winning the soccer event.

“The secret was having fun while doing something with your classmates,” said Doyle, a computer engineering major. “There was lots of trial and error with this project, with lots of things that needed to be solved along the way. It was lots of fun.”

Team members were chosen by the course’s professors that included Daniel Chang, PhD, Michael Cracraft, PhD, Deborah Walter, PhD, and Simoni. Some students brought lots of robotics and programming experience to the class, while others had little or no background in how to get the robot to complete the tasks.

“We all had to learn to work together to be successful,” said computer engineering major James DiMarco, a former leader of his high school robotics team. “While there were some things that I knew, (teammates Joey Culotta and Wyatt Ryder) brought different perspectives and creative solutions to the project. At the end, we succeeded as a team.”

That’s one of the main lessons of the Engineering Practice course, according to Simoni. “We try to come up with ways to get the students thinking, working together, and having fun with elements of electrical and computer engineering. Robots provide a great learning platform,” he said.

Here are the RobOlympic Pentathlon’s gold medal-winning teams:

Overall: Mateo Cirino, Aaron Feng, and Caeden Swanner
Long Jump: Andrew Jansen, Tyler Pinedo, and Gabe Stille
Hurdles: Ray Egner, Andrew Noblitt, and Zach Rhein
Shot Put: Carson Brown, Sam Scheib, Ibtihal Utsho, and Eli Youngblood
Soccer: Joshua Doyle, Peter Fields, and Jonah Loper
Floor Exercise: Mateo Cirino, Aaron Feng, and Caeden Swanner