Case Robotics Rocks

CWRUbotix has grown from a modest club into a national high achiever and one of the largest engineering student groups. What happened?

By Eddie Kerekes

For members of CWRUbotix, there are a few aspects of the robotics that bring them back every year. The chance to dive into interesting and engaging projects is one. So is feeling like a valuable member of a team.

But the main draw for Andrea Norris, a junior electrical engineering major from San Diego, is the sense of accomplishment she feels after finishing a robot and succeeding at a competition.

Norris, the team’s treasurer, says that feeling of success draws her back again and again.

“When you build something and it actually works and goes on to actually do well in competition, that’s kind of addictive,” she said.

Plenty of engineering students know the feeling. CWRUbotix, Case’s robotics team, has risen from a small group of dedicated engineers just seven years ago into a diversified team with more than 70 members and achievements on the national stage. The team will begin broadening its horizons in 2019 as it plans for new competitions that build upon recent successes.

In May, the team finished fourth at the national NASA Robotic Mining Competition. That followed a fifth-place finish in 2017, when the Case team outscored teams from Purdue University,

the University of Michigan and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Meanwhile, at the National Robotics Challenge (NRC) in April, CWRUbotix won the Combat Robot tournament for the second-straight year—and the team’s systems engineering paper took first place at NASA RMC, the first time it entered that category.

Rhys Hamlet, the club’s president and a senior mechanical engineering major from Seattle, hopes to build on the momentum. He said one of the team’s goals this year is to win NASA RMC for the first time.

In that contest, the team designs a single robot that must be able to collect samples on a simulated Martian terrain. Building such a machine requires multiple skills, deep planning and constant collaboration. For example, the mining robot has mechanical, hardware and software teams. The mechanical team is further divided into locomotion, excavation and depository groups, while the software team contains autonomy and localization groups.

“We usually look for something that breaks people down by general technical interest and then by specialization,” said Hamlet.

The team tries to give everyone a role they can be proud to possess, he added.

“When people know they have a specific job to do and a specific thing they need to get working, you feel a lot more connected to the project as a whole,” Norris said.

NRC, which is held in Marion, Ohio, demands separate robots for different competitions. This year, the team is planning on competing in the micromouse, combat and autonomous vehicle events. In the past, it also designed robots for the maze, rescue and sumo categories.

New trend, new challenges

CWRUbotix is riding an engineering trend. Interest in robotics education and robotics clubs has risen dramatically across the country at both the high school and collegiate levels. Over 530,000 students competed in the FIRST robotics competition, for high school students and lower, during the 2017–18 school year.

CWRUbotix has sought to harness this growing interest, adopting the motto “We build robots because robots are awesome.”

Traditionally, the team restricts itself to two major competitions—NRC and NASA RMC. But because of growing membership, Hamlet said it is adding the Marine Advanced Technology Education ROV competition, held in June in Kingsport, Tennessee. For that event, the team must design a remotely operated vehicle to complete underwater tasks.

“It’s the next step for our team to grow and be bigger and more successful and more active in the Case community,” Norris said.

Hamlet thinks a busy competition schedule will build a stronger club.

“You look at really successful design team programs, and a lot of the ones that have really grown, do multiple things,” he added. “It seems like the clubs and design teams that really have the longest life and really stick around at other universities do this multi-project thing.”

Still, one quality separates CWRUbotix from other high-achieving collegiate teams: a large presence of mechanical engineering students.

Many teams are dominated by students majoring in computer science or electrical engineering, and they often lack people who know how to actually build the robot. The Case team has the opposite problem, with quite a few mechanical engineers but a small percentage of students who understand the coding behind the mechanics.

Team advisor Richard Bachmann, PhD, said the large numbers of mechanical engineering students derives from the influence of The Center for Biologically Inspired Robotics Research in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Bachmann, an associate professor in the center, said that he mentions the robotics team in his classes as applications for his lectures.

Technical training is key

Getting students interested in the team is just half of the battle. Team leaders need to keep that interest while sharpening skills.

In fall 2016, the team started a boot camp in which new members work in

The robotics exhibit evoked curiosity and occasionally amazement at the Innovation ShowCASE at Homecoming 2018.

small teams to build robots from scratch, under the guidance of an experienced member. Hamlet said the projects allow freshmen and new members to be engaged with the club as soon as they join. They don’t have to wait until the spring semester to start building robots for competitions.

The team also hosts a series of lectures on topics like Solidworks, electrical design and designing circuit boards. The lectures are created and taught by team members, often the leads of current projects.

Norris added that the lectures provide an opportunity for the team to teach relevant information throughout the year.

“I’ve seen people enter these lecture series with no idea what they’re doing, and leave two or three sessions later way ahead of where they were,” Hamlet said.

They also are valuable for students to learn skills they can add to their resumes or take to their classes. Norris noted that whenever she encounters transistors in her coursework, she thinks back to the CWRUbotix lecture during her freshman year.

Bachmann said the team has successfully grown strong leaders, who teach the younger members. Through these efforts, CWRUbotix has become a strong presence on campus and in the Case School of Engineering. It’s hoping to translate that growth into even more successes at national competitions and demonstrate the value of a Case education. CWRUbotix receives funding from the Case Alumni Association. If you would like to support the team, contact Janna Greer, Manager of Donor Relations and Grants; janna.greer@casealum.org; 216-368-3647.

Find more information on CWRUbotix at the group’s website, http://cwrubotix.case.edu/.