A total of 21 robots competed in the finals of UCD’s annual RoboRugby competition yesterday afternoon.
The contest is the culmination of many weeks of hard work by teams of first-year Engineering and Computer Science students from the university.
How it works
In RoboRugby, small autonomous robots try to score points by moving balls into the scoring areas at each end of the playing table.
A match involves two robots competing head to head, and each match lasts 60 seconds.
Each team built their robot from a standard kit of parts. The robots are controlled by an on-board computer, programmed in advance of the competition.
There is no remote control – the team cannot intervene during a match. So the robots have to rely on their programming and information from sensors to navigate around the table, find balls and move them to the scoring areas.
The winners
The winning team of Darragh O’Brien, Conor Moloney and James Kilkenny Roddy were presented with their award by Michael O’Connor of sponsors Siemens.
The Darius Innovation Award went to Botball, an ingenious double-ended robot, designed by Conor Casey, Stephen Killian and John O’Connor.
A prize for the best-looking robot was won by April Colley, Sean Draper and Ruari McMahon.
Learn more
Find out more about the science of robots
Read the rules of RoboRugby
Download Interactive C, software designed for a similar robotics programnme and which is free for educators and the general public to use.
