Robot Sumo team in TV smackdown!

Mechatronics graduates, Shaunak Shroff, Wilson Tanuwidjaja and Huayi Chan went into battle with their robot, Maximus, which was also victorious in the preliminary round against an independent Geelong team.

Maximus is a small but powerful robot, with a series of sonar sensors on the front and sides. The sensors detect nearby objects, which the robot tracks and then charges at. Robot Sumo pits two such robots against each other in a battle to push the other out of the ring.

The team says that Maximus had sustained a few “war wounds” from his sumo battles, but was in pretty good shape, considering.

Maximus was the team’s final year mechatronics design project in 2010, and took them four to five months to design and build. During the process they changed their design twice, and Maximus underwent much painstaking testing.

“First of all, we wanted it to be powerful. Second, we wanted it to have a very low clearance from the ground so that you can get in under your opponents,” says Wilson Tanuwidjaja.

“This is also important so that your opponents can’t get in under you, because if they lift you up, then your tyres are off the ground and you lose traction and power,” says Shaunak Shroff.

“We only had one robot to test with, so mostly we just used ourselves, and we let the robot detect us and attack us,” says Mr Tanuwidjaja.

Their hard work has certainly paid off, with Maximus taking out the 2010 Victorian Invetech Robot Sumo contest, defeating reigning champions Swinburne University.

Their project supervisor, Associate Professor Chris Manzie, alerted the team to The New Inventors competition, which they promptly signed up for.

“We just thought we’d take it easy, see how it goes and hope for the best. We’d done our preparation work,” says Mr Shroff.

Huayi Chan says that the victory was “just fantastic”.

They say that while there was no current plan to enter Maximus into any further Robot Sumo battles, he was not ready for retirement just yet.

“Who knows, The New Inventors might want to have a re-match!” says Mr Shroff.

The three recent graduates are currently on the lookout for work in the highly specialised mechatronics industry.

“Mechatronics is just fun, it’s engaging and its really challenging as well. Not only do you have to think of the mechanical design of a robot, you also design how you are going to make it work and how you are going to make it think,” says Mr Tanuwidjaja.

“To get all three aspects working together is quite an achievement,” says Mr Shroff.

The Robot Sumo segment can be seen on The New Inventors site
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/newinventors/txt/s3165589.htm .