Video: Caltech competition shows robot soccer is much more violent than the human version

Soccer players at Caltech caught on fire, lost limbs and sent chunks of their wooden frames flying Tuesday. But that’s what is expected when engineering students play robotic soccer.

The 31st aual Mechanical Engineering 72u2009Design Competition at Caltech in Pasadena pitted five teams of five students and three robots against each other for the “Tridroid Cup.” They smashed, chucked and flipped their way to victory in matches with frequent failures. The competition sometimes felt more like the television show “BattleBots” than a typical soccer match.

“I hit forward on the controller and nothing happened — well, it made a noise at me and then caught fire,” said Nashant Desai, a member of the Breaking Falls team.

By the end of the day, Breaking Falls wheeled the remains of two players out on a cart with scorch marks along the bottom of one wooden frame.

Engineering instructor Michael Mello actually beat the flames down with his Tridroid Cup T-shirt early on.

“They get a breather from theory, from all their classroom experiences,” Mello said. “This is a real outlet for them, it’s an opportunity to be creative.”

• Video: 31st aual Mechanical Engineering 72 Design Competition at Caltech

Mello’s students, typically juniors in the mechanical engineering program, build the three robots over two quarters, then destroy them in an afteoon. The teams spend hundreds of hours and roughly $1,300 total on their projects. Mello follows their progress from the initial design phase and grades them on their plaing and execution. But it’s less about how they do in the competition and more about how they work through the inevitable problems that crop up along the way, he said.

The matchups require the robots to navigate over speed bumps or through a narrow gap in the center of the field. Then, they need to push or throw soccer balls — up to 12 on the field at a time — through goals. Other robots can try to block the shots.

Many ended up stuck on a speed bump, spiing their wheels or too damaged to move.

The competition, while fun, also teaches the students how to design reliable products. Finding that reliability was definitely a leaing process for every one of the teams.

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• Photos: Caltech’s Tridroid Cup

Team Flicketts struggled throughout the day to get its robots moving, with a few matches ending before their wheels made even one rotation. Hours beforehand, everything seemed fine, said team member Nick Buoniconti.

“There’s a million things that can go wrong,” Buoniconti said, as another team’s robot went full speed into the side of a structure in the middle of the field.

In Flicketts’ case, the coections between components failed, teaching the team a valuable lesson about how even the smallest piece matters.

At the end of the day, team Blitzkrieg Bots took the trophy. It beat out team TBD, which scored some of the highest points during the day using two robots that could pick up soccer balls and fire them through a three-point goal.

Blitzkrieg’s smaller robots focused on one-point scores — obtained by rolling a ball through holes in the coer of the field — while one of its larger robots blocked TBD’s shots. Throughout the day, Blitzkrieg struggled to keep its goalie ruing after a mechanical failure early on. But it all came together in the final matchup.

“This is the best class in the Caltech mechanical engineering program,” said Tomas Tussie, a Blitzkrieg member.

“It’s the perfect mix of hands-on experience and theoretical knowledge,” added teammate Michael Jenson.

The team members estimate they spent 700 to 800u2009hours working on their robots. Tussie said he had little free time outside of his course load and the team.

“I’m going to have so much free time,” he said after the win.

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