The UAH design team entry placed 2nd among 39 teams
entered in the SoutheastCon 2005 Student Hardware Competition, a testament to UAH engineering program quality
and student discipline. They lost to Mississippi State University in a final timed tournament face-off. Team
captain Austin Harkins (right in photo) and designer Josh Lovvorn (left) were the primary robot designers and
integrators, looking tired but happy in this photo taken immediately after the contest. MECH the robot
was the focus of their senior design project in the Fall 2004 and Spring 2005 semesters. They attended the
Fort Lauderdale competition along with several other UAH Student Branch members.
Going into the championship round, Mississippi State had accumulated 200 preliminary qualifying points, while UAH followed closely at 180 points. After a series of false starts caused by camera strobes in the tournament area (contest rules warned of flashes and advised “design to adapt”), Mississippi State finished first at 1 minute, 28 seconds during the final face-off, despite partially covering the parking square. UAH completed their rounds after collecting all targets with a spiral search pattern and returning to the starting square at 2 minutes, 51 seconds. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the final tournament movie is worth quite a few. Follow this link to watch the action in the final UAH-MSU tournament face-off.
Deeming the official tournament rules as representing near unachievable performance constraints,
the SECON robotic judges relaxed the contest standards early in preliminary runs to reduce
technical disqualifications. The most common published disqualification rules that were not
enforced were failing to start after the LED "go" signal and running off the playing board. Of
39 competitors, UAH was the only team that never faulted using the published tournament rules during
any match, and one of a small handful that parked the robot completely within the starting square
at every contest end, another rule that the judges relaxed early. The published contest guidelines
allotted 50 points for correct parking, but the judges adopted a lenient definition, reducing
what would have been an even larger UAH technical advantage.
Austin and Josh concurred that all teams used some form of magnetic ball retrieval, but that robot configurations, pre-race preparation, and tournament performance varied widely among competing teams. They were both very happy with robot MECH's performance against the competition and that it consistently conformed to published tournament rules. All UAH attendees from the design team and student chapter enjoyed the team competitions and had a great time at those and other conference events.