Winning Project: Jenny the Autonomous Recycling Robot

Summer 2020

Our team [RowBots]: L - R: Nick Bratvold [Sawyer Sailor]; Lewis Arnold [Infinite Innovator]; Holden Jones [The Little RowBot That Could]; Mykal Bakker-Westeinde [Jenny]

Context: The annual UBC Engineering Physics Robot Competition is one of the main draws of the program. Every year, all students, in teams of 4, participate in a summer-long course where they design and build a robot from scratch to complete a given challenge.

With the covid pandemic, my class' robot summer was unique. In the past, competitions were run through the project lab with access to CNC machines, laser cutters, 3D printers, 5 in-person instructors and more. Ours had to be run completely online from home with access to none of these fabrication methods. We each bought a home electronics kit and all the electrical work was similar to that of years past, but the mechanical design had to be done with at-home materials, namely corrugated cardboard, an exacto knife and a glue gun. While in the past a team of 4 would each work on one robot for the competition, this year each team member made their own robot. The winning team was the one with the best averaged score across each of the 4 robots. While we collaborated on overall design strategy, this meant that I was responsible for every element of my robot: the electronics, building a reliable frame from at home materials and the software.

By building reliable, fast robots, our team won the 16 team competition. My robot (named Jenny after Forrest Gump) scored the most points of all 64 built, missing only one can of the 36 across 6 rounds. You can watch Jenny here (jumps to my semi-final run, 4B). Below is an overview of the competition and our robot design.