“I spoke with several of the teams at the competition and they said they enjoyed the event and planned to attend next year,” said Rachel Grundmann, the Mercury Robotics Competition Lead.

The robot must be operated remotely over the Internet from at least 50 miles away. This presents an interesting engineering challenge in which electrical and mechanical design, embedded programming, wireless communication, and latency all play a large role. This year’s challenge was to complete the track and accomplish each task in order to get a maximum score. Tasks included picking up a golf ball, carrying it over a bridge, and dropping it in the designated drop zone. 

The 2015 Mercury Remote Robot Challenge Champion was Robot #16 UH Cougars from University of Houston. Second Place went to Robot #10 Calango from Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia da Paraíba \ Campus Cajazeiras and Third Place went to Robot #6 The Mountineers from West Virginia University.

Additional awards were presented for the Best Video, Best Design and Judges’ Choice awarded to Robot #8 UBOL from UT IEEE RAS University of Texas at Austin, Robot #5 Power Rangineers from Arkansas Tech University and Robot #15 JEEPAO/YIPAO.

Mercury Robotics has been growing the last few years going from a single competition with less than 15 robots to an international competition with tracks in Stillwater and Pueblo, Mexico and more that 30 robots competing. There is no fee to enter the competition and Mercury Robotics paid for hotel rooms for a lot of long distance travelers. 

For more information on the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology at OSU, visit www.ceat.okstate.edu.