Undergraduate Robotics Team Wins Regional Championship

The undergraduate robotics team took first place at this year's regional championship, beating fourteen other university teams with an autonomous sorting robot built almost entirely outside of scheduled coursework.

The team, made up mostly of second and third-year engineering and computer science students, spent most of the term meeting in the evenings in a borrowed workshop space, iterating on a design that failed its first two qualifying runs before the final version clicked into place.

"We rebuilt the gripper four times," the team captain said. "The version that won isn't that different from the one that failed in week two — we just finally got the timing right."

The team will represent the university at the national championship later this year.