Science Club Reels in Robotics Recognition
The Computer Science Club
Issue date: 5/30/09 Section: Campus News
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The club ranked top senior unified team and second place in the robotics competition beat only by a Chinese team. The contest attracted 103 teams from across the United States and internationally from countries including China, Israel, Portugal and Canada. Their robot TOBOR II was one of only three robots in the senior division, comprised of 36 teams, to complete all three runs of the competition.
The club not only placed well in the robotics competition but performed exceptionally well on a poster and test portion of the best unified team competition. While an Israeli high school team won first place for the best unified team overall, the Bridgewater State College Computer Science Club was the runner up and surpassed all other teams in their division (comprised of colleges and independent teams) for best unified performance.
The robot is comprised of reused parts from last year with the exception of new wheels and motors funded through SGA. The robot can find a lit candle in any room of the maze and put it out with a water squirter and then return to it's home position autonomously.
This year the Computer Science Club did not have the resources to fund the trip to the competition, relying on a donation from a family member. To fund the next iteration of TOBOR, the Computer Science Club is currently searching for other sources of funding in this tough economic time.
"We are extremely happy to have improved from last year's 3rd place and more than halved our robot maze completion time," said Russell Nickerson, Computer Science Club Vice President. "It is still surreal to realize that this competition basically states that we are the best college robotics team in America."
"Our main goal this year was to improve the robots time score and place second place. Last year we finished third with an overall runtime of 122 seconds. This year finishing second, we decreased the time score to 75 seconds. It was an overall team effort led by Computer Science Club President, Brian MacAllister. Brian is the most diligent student I've seen in my life and deserves the most credit. He put the most amount of time and development to the fire fighting robot, TOBOR II. Vice President, Russell Nickerson successively communicated with SGA to acquire funding for motors. Antonio Beltran and Russell aided in the complete re-design of the mechanical aspects of the robot. Nicholas Anastasia provided a last minute solution that fixed a fluke in our robot. The team's perseverance is the reason for our success," explained Alex Myers, Computer Science Club Secretary.
Brian MacAllister, Computer Science Club President, was proud of his organization's success.
"I was happy to be a part of this team and look forward to competing again next year," he said.
The Computer Science Club anticipates entering the competition again next year to represent the school. Now the Computer Science Club will be working on a computer cluster assembled from BSC's old computers to be used for cancer research and heavy processing tasks.
For more information about the Computer Science Club or if you would like to donate towards TOBOR III please contact: bmacallister@bridgew.edu or jsantore@bridgew.edu
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