National Instruments Annual Autonmous Robotics Competition

National Instruments Oceania has announced the participating teams for the 3rd annual National Instruments Autonomous Robotics Competition, a student robotics competition designed to encourage development and innovation in the field of robotics

A total of 22 teams will be participating in this year’s NI ARC, representing top universities from across Australia and New Zealand.

This year’s theme is “Gold Rush” and requires the teams to design autonomous robots which can navigate an obstacle course, identify and handle project.

Matej Krajnc, Managing Director for National Instruments Oceania said the competition allows students to demonstrate their engineering skills and broaden their career pathways.

The competition, which commences in April and concludes in September 2013, will involve each team developing an autonomous robot that will ultimately compete in a live competition with the objective of autonomously completing a set of predefined tasks in the shortest amount of time and earning the most points.

The students, working alongside NI engineers, will get the opportunity to showcase their robotics talents in front of a large audience from industry and academia at the live competition in September. Teams from the following universities and tertiary institutions will be competing in the 2013 competition: Charles Darwin University- Team CDU Curtin University – Curtin Robotics Club (CRoCs) Flinders University – Flinders Knights Griffith University – Gruebot La Trobe University – The Eagles Manukau Institute of Technology – MITe (MIT Engineering) Queensland University of Technology – QRC Engineering Queensland University of Technology – PrintReal Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology- Samme Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology – heRMIT Swinburne University – Swin- bots University of Adelaide – Team Smaug University of Auckland – The Non Existent University of Newcastle – UoN NIARC University of Sydney – Cats on Mars University of Sydney – Breakpoint University of Technology Sydney – UTS Robotics Society University of Western Sydney – Wanderlust University of Wollongong – UOW Robotics Team University of New South Wales – UNSW University of New South Wales – UNSW Mechatronics Victoria University of Wellington- Ownbot 2.0

Participating teams have each received a development kit featuring an NI single boardRIO 9636, and the NI LabVIEW 2012 with LabVIEW Robotics Module for the development of their autonomous robot. maxon motor is a proud sponsor of this event and have also provided each team with a gift voucher for purchase of maxon DC servo motors to use in the competition. Some teams have already taken advantage of this ordering maxon DC Servo motors and our ESCON controllers.

The winner of the NI Autonomous Robotics Competition will receive a prize of $3000, with $1500 for the runner-up and a bonus prize of $500 for the best robot design.

Additionally, all teams that successfully complete the tasks in this competition, regardless of their finishing position, will get to keep their development kits valued at over $20,000. Good luck to all the participating teams.

Contact maxon motor Australia in our Sydney office for further assistance Ph:+61 2 9476 4777

maxon motor ESCON DC servo motor controller