Members Challenge: The Great Egg Race

Wednesday 10 December 2014 10:00am - 12:00am

Institute of Making

The challenge is to build a moving robot that can pick up an egg and travel a short distance before putting it down in a nest, without smashing it! Your robot will need to travel over a variety of different terrains/surfaces, straddle a post, go under a limbo pole, negotiate a sideways slope and navigate through a slalom to finally deliver the fresh, un-smashed egg, into its/ nest.

The race course: The race will be held on the checker-plate floor-lift of the Institute of Making. The track your robot will need to travel along will be around 50cm wide, but may narrow to 40cm in places. The egg will need to be collected from a piece of fake grass that will be located on the floor, and placed into a frying pan (also on the floor) at the end of the race.
Measurements:
The square cube  is 10cm (this must be straddled)
The limbo is 20cm heigh.
No narrower than 40cm.
Down steps 2cm.

Categories: Fastest Robot, Mr Personality, All-round Best in Show. 
Race Day: Wednesday 10th December, 10am-12pm.
Judges: Roboticist Iain Duncan, our Creative Director Zoe Laughlin, and a master programmer Prof Mark Handley.

The Prize: £300 cash prize for the winning team. 

The Rules:
- The robot has to pick up and put down the egg on its own.
- It has to travel with the egg.
- You can work in a team (of any size) or individually.
- The egg will be a fresh, free-range, medium sized chicken egg. (supplied by the Institute of Making on race day)
- Your robot can be electronic, mechanical or remote-controlled.
- It will have to tackle each obstacles and the variety terrains in turn to deposit the egg and complete the race. Egg dropping is a fine, rather then disqualification, as long as it remains intact. 
- Your robot can not be made entirely from commercially available kits, parts or pre-programmed bots. 
- Your robots cannot be airborne. 

Register your team by emailing your team name to: events@instituteofmaking.org.uk

Workshops:  Between now and December there will be a range of workshops for you to sign onto which will aid your robot building. Sessions will range from bodge robot building, Arduino workshops aimed at programming your bots and technical building help. 

Wednesday 5th November, 2-5pm: Arduino session on working with stepper motors, DC motors and servos.
Wednesday 12th November, 2-5pm: Arduino session with linking to bluetooth and other remote controlling methods.
(both of the above sessions will be bookable via the website)

Part of Members Event: Robots Week,  Member Events