Teams from the U.S., China and Israel Take Top Honors
HARTFORD, CT — Two 16-year-old students from West Hartford, CT, captured the award for the best overall robot at the conclusion of Trinity College’s 15th annual Fire Fighting Home Robot Contest held Saturday and Sunday, April 12 and 13 in the Oosting Gym on campus.
The two teenagers, Nathaniel Barshay and David Haber, were declared World Champions for a robot named MISHAP (Minimal Intelligence So Hope And Pray) VI. The two, who had entered the contest in previous years, built the robot in Barshay’s basement. Although the team was
not affiliated with a school or organization, both teens are students at Hall High School.
Although the competition took place over two days, about 75 teams qualified Saturday to participate in the main event on Sunday. Each team’s robot had three chances to navigate a maze resembling the floor plan of a house, locate a burning candle
, and extinguish the flame in the shortest amount of time. The robots had to be autonomous and the competition was divided into five categories: a junior division featuring middle-school students; a high school division; a senior division made up of college students; walking (for robots that used only legs to move); and an expert division, which was open to any team regardless of the contestant’s age or affiliation.
There also was a second competition that featured robots capable of navigating a similar maze and locating a child that was presumably disabled and unable to find his or her way out of the burning house. That contest, called “Robot Hide and Seek,” was sponsored by The Connecticut Council on Developmental Disabilities.
The contest was kicked off by Hartford Fire Chief Charles A. Teale who noted that in 2007, 650 city residents lost their homes and three people died in fires. “I implore you to remain committed to what you’re doing because you’re going to succeed in saving lives and property,” he said.
By day’s end, after hundreds of trials had been run, the event was declared a resounding success by David Ahlgren, director of the contest and Karl W. Hallden Professor of Engineering at Trinity. “Everything went smoothly, we had great geographic participation and diversity and there was a lot of interesting activity at all levels of the competition.”
The lead sponsor of the two-day event was Versa Products Inc., of New Jersey, whose president and CEO is Jan Larsson, a 1977 graduate of Trinity and former student of Ahlgren’s. Larsson, who was on hand for the activities, provided a free valve to any team that wanted one. The team in each category that achieved the highest score using a Versa Valve won the Versa Valves Challenge, and received a $500 cash prize.
“One of the biggest challenges for a manufacturing business is recruiting talented engineers,” said Larsson. “That’s why it’s so important to support initiatives such as this contest to help inspire students to pursue engineering as a career path.”
The winner in the junior division was a team from Guangdong Nanhai Yanbu School in Guangdong Province, China. Barshay and Haber won the high school standard division and a team from Shanghai Yichuan High School in China took honors in the high school entry division. Carleton College in Minnesota finished first in the walking category. The senior division was won by a Trinity College team, whose robot was named KILLER and whose members included Amanda Poole, Kathryn Smith-Petersen and Ben Rosenblum of the class of 2011. Doug Chapman of Goffstown, New Hampshire, won the expert division, and a team from Israel garnered the top prize in the “Hide and Seek Challenge.”
The teams that won the Versa Valves Challenge were from the George School in Newtown, Pennsylvania; Penn State University; and Rob Stehlik and Tania Duprey of Toronto, Canada.
The check for nearly $30,000 that Larsson presented to Trinity President James F. Jones Jr. supported the contest and the Versa Valves Challenge this past weekend. But it will also support a new Versa Valves engineering internship program in which two Trinity students will serve as mentors teaching robotics to Hartford students attending Trinity’s Dream Camp during the summer of 2008. Among the goals of the program is to introduce the students to the basic principles of robotics and prepare the students to enter the competition in the spring of 2009.