Roborama 2023

Roborama, DPRG’s May indoor competition, was held on May 13th. There were three competition contests conducted:

  • Quick Trip– Robots drive in a straight line to a location and return to their starting point.
  • Four Corners– Robots navigate a large square and compete to see who can come the closest to their starting point.
  • Six Can– Robots race to remove 6 cans from an arena.

The results were:

Contest Place Contestant Robot Name Score/Time
Quick Trip 1st Harold Pulcher JimBot 7 – 12:53
Quick Trip 2nd Scott Gibson Can Man 7 – 18:00
Quick Trip 3rd Mike Williamson 6 Pack 7 – 21:53
Four Corners 1st Carl Ott HoverSim 0.75”
Four Corners 2nd Doug Paradis Club Bot 1.75”
FourCorners 3rd Mike Ivison BenTher 6.00”
Six-Cans 1st Scott Gibson Can Man 6 – 2:07
Six-Cans 2nd Ray Casler Tin Man 6 – 5:28

A good time was had by all.

Roborama – 2022, Video and Results

DPRG held its first non-virtual robot competition since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic on June 18, 2022. The pandemic brought many bad things, but one good outcome was the many friends that the club gained in its weekly virtual meetings. This year’s competition included a method for competitors which do not live in Dallas area to compete by submitting YouTube videos on the day of the contest of robot runs at their location. It worked very well. We hope to grow the number of remote competitors in future competitions.

Results

• 4 Corners Local: 1st Scott Gibson (1-5/8″), 2nd Doug Paradis (2-1/4″). 3rd Carl Ott (4″)
• 4 Corners Remote: 1st Pat Caron (1-1/8″),
• 4 Corners Spinning/Pirouette Demo Local: 1st David Anderson (16-1/2″), 2nd Carl Ott (94″)
note: Local course was 9′ per side, Remote course was 8′ per side.

• 6-Cans: 1st Scott Gibson (6 cans – 1:52), 2nd Ray Caster (6 cans – 2:30), 3rd Jack Jones (6 cans – 5:30)

Next Competition

RoboColumbus, an outdoor autonomous rover contest, will be held in October of 2022. See competition tab for details.

Roborama 2020 has been canceled

The Roborama 2020 competition that was scheduled for April 25th, 2020 has been canceled due to the coronavirus situation. At this time DPRG expects to conduct an outdoor competition, RoboColumbus, sometime in the Summer and an indoor competition in November. Please stay tuned for future announcements.

Roborama 2019 Gallery

Nothing gets the enthusiasm going like a good robotics match. The enthusiasm at Roborama 2019 was epic. Everyone was excited and enjoyed themselves. 

DPRG would like to thank all the competitors that participated, all the members who helped manage the event, and our sponsors. A particular shout out goes to: Mouser, Pololu, Rev Robotics, and Tanner Electronics for their support. 

Here is a gallery of some of the sights at the competition. Click on the images to see an expanded view.

Roborama 2019 Pre-registration

 

Pre-registration Time is NOW!

With Roborama 2019 less than a month away (May 11th), it is time to pre-register your robot team. If you tried and ran into problems, those problems are now fixed. Try again. Pre-registered teams get the best pit area placements. This year’s competition has several contests that will test your robot’s skills. Come compete, win, and take home great prizes.

  • Plastic Fastener-only Sumo – a student only event. Pits your robot in a contest of strength and strategy as you attempt to push your opponent from the arena. 
  • Line Following – with contests for beginners through advanced competitors and a special student only contest. Tests if your robot can follow a line around the course.
  • Quick Trip – an open event. Can your robot go straight? Can it make a 180 degree turn? This contest tests a fundamental skill of your robot. Never been in a robot competition? This might be your contest.
  • Four Corners – an open event. So your robot can go straight and turn, can it maneuver a large square and come back to its starting location? How close can it come?
  • Table Top (classic) – an open event. This contest is for the daring. Your robot moves around a table top with nothing to keep it from taking the plunge to the floor as you perform three tasks.
  • Can-Can Soccer – an open event. Race another robot to collect cans while not getting confused or hitting your opponent. 

More information and rules to the contests can be found at:

https://www.dprg.org/roborama-2019-competition/

Roborama 2017 Results

On the morning of May 13th, the Dallas Makerspace bustled with the excitement of competitors in the 22th annual Roborama. Activities started with a tour of the makerspace. Many of the competitors and their guests had never seen a makerspace and the creative possibilities displayed by the work of various makers was a real eye opener.

Each competitor or team was assigned a table area in the pit room where they fussed with final robot adjustments while checking in. At check in, robots were measured, weighted, and inspected to insure that they passed competition rules. By the time check in was finished, everyone was very excited.

In the Plastic Fastener Sumo contest, the quality of the robots was good. The impact of the learning from the Sumo/Line Following workshop, held a week before Roborama, was clearly evident. The competitors that had attended the workshop had taken to heart the best practices they had learned. As always the competition was fierce with several of the matches not decided until a final push by the winner.

The Line Following contest, the second part of the student portion of the of the competition, also showed improvement over past contests, with the winning robots achieving higher speeds. The contest doesn’t require the robots to be made from plastic fasteners, however all student competitors used them.

After the student portion of Roborama concluded, prizes were rewarded to the winners of the student portion of the competition. Each winner received a DPRG trophy and choice of a complete robot kit or a gift certificate provided by our sponsors. Kits and certificates were provided by Pololu, Parallax, REV Robotics, Tanners Electronics, RoboRealm. and Richard Neveau.

                          

                                            Trophies                                                                      Prizes
Winners

The unrestricted participation part of Roborama consisted of the contests Big Table Top 2 and Can Can Soccer. In Big Table Top 2, a robot must complete 4 tasks. The tasks are: return a can to the starting zone, knock a can off the table, place a can into an overhanging box on the side of the table, and use the two remaining cans to form a line with the can in the starting zone that a yard stick can lay over (cans must be at least 8 inches apart). The top prize for Big Table Top 2 was won by a visitor to Roborama from Vancouver Canada, Markus Lampert.  His robot, Freddie, achieved a perfect score with a hitchless performance on the 1st attempt. Freddie has a hand crafted frame made of jig sawed plywood, a very tight design that incorporates several IR sensors, and a unique fin style grabber using flexible 3d printed claws. Markus is a member of the Vancouver Robotics Club (www. vancouverroboticsclub.org). Second place was taken by Doug Paradis with his robot, Little Andy.

                          

                          Freddie dropping can over edge                       Freddie placing cans in a line

Can Can Soccer, where two robots go head to head in an non-aggressive test to collect cans, becomes more competitive and exciting with each repetition of the contest. The winner this year was Doug Paradis and his robot VEX Navigator. Vex Navigator is built with the VEX IQ system. It incorporates a CMUCAM5 Pixy to identify cans. The Pixy is connected via a TI MSP430 LaunchPad  board, using the techniques published by James Pearson, in his documentation of the VEX IQ Sensor Reference. Second and third places were won by Ray Casler and Scott Gibson. Ray’s robot, Rainman, sported several new modifications. The modifications included a beacon system to allow determination of location after a collusion event. Scott’s robot, Can Man, usually a truly strong contender, suffered from a flurry of undetermined problems that hampered performance. Markus Lampert’s robot, Freddie, also participated. Fredde made a good show, but did not place. The final bout pitted VEX Navigator versus Rainman. In the ending moments of the bout, Rainman and VEX Navigator targeted the same can. Time ended with Rainman trying to catch VEX Navigator as Navigator snatched the can and placed the winning can into the goal.

                         

                               Big Table Top 2 Winners                                   Can Can Soccer Winners

Trophies and prizes were handed out by DPRG President Steve Edwards.

Judges

Steve Edwards, David Ackley, and Richard Neveau were the judges for the event.