Battling Robots to Compete in Somerville

An upcoming competition gives designers "one week to craft the most devastating robot possible," and on April 21 those robots will engage in combat at The Center for Arts at the Armory.

Yes, we're talking about battling robots.

The competition is part of a design challenge launched by Somerville's Artisan's Asylum and MathWorks, the software company, and it represents the grand finale of the upcoming Cambridge Science Festival. 

Head-to-head combat

In a nutshell, eight teams will have one week to design and build autonomous robots that will fight for supremacy at the April 21 battle.

Because they're autonomous, "These robots are not piloted by people," explained Paul Kassebaum, an Artisan's Asylum member, MathWorks employee and one of the organizers of the upcoming clash. The robots "think on their own," he said.

Kassebaum described the parameters of the event.

Two robots will face off against each other in a circular ring that will be set up in the middle of the Armory. The robots will be armed, but not with weapons that are too dangerous—no flame throwers and buzz saws. The weapons will "mostly be of a smashing variety, and crushing," Kessebaum said.

The combat will be "a mix between sumo and traditional battlebots of destruction," he said. In other words, the robots will try to push their opponents out of the ring or demolish them.

In the end there will be a champion.

One week to design and build the robots

The April 21 tournament, which begins at 3:30 p.m., is free and open to the public, but most of the competition takes place somewhat behind the scenes.

Each of the eight teams consists of three to five members, Kassebaum said.

Every team has at least one high school or college student who studies engineering and robotics, and the other team members are composed of people who are interested in robotics and building machines. 

Their journey begins April 14 at the Artisan's Asylum, and they'll have through the morning of April 21 to complete their designs.

Along the way they'll be assisted by mentors from Artisan's Asylum and MathWorks.

Artisan's Asylum will help the teams build the physical parts of the robots. Teams may come into design week with little more than a drawing of what they want, Kassebaum said. The mentors will help them transform those drawings into computerized designs, and the various pieces of the robots will be cut out of aluminum using a plasma cutter.

Each robot will be built around a basic four-wheeled chassis, but otherwise the teams will design the whole robots themselves.

Then there's the software. Mathworks is equipping teams with its Simulink software, which allows them to "quickly and relatively easily design their own robots," Kassebaum said.

By customizing the software, each robot will have different strategies for moving around the ring and engaging the enemy. Perhaps most important, the software will help a given robot decide, "When do I start swinging my hammer?" Kassebaum said.

Each robot will have a series red or green sensors on it, and there will be a camera above the ring—an "eye in the sky" Kassebaum called it—that will perceive the sensors and, like a miniature GPS system, coordinate the movements and actions of the battling robots.

Grand prize is a flying robot

The team behind the battle's victorious robot will win an autonomous quadcopter—a drone helicopter—that runs on the same Simulink software, a package worth about $1,000. Let's hope the winning team decides to use its prize for good and not evil.

Kassebaum said Artisan's Asylum has become a center of robotics technology in the area, and MathWorks has set up a work station in the makerspace. It's also provided a sponsorship for Artisan's Asylum worth about $150,000, much of that number coming from donated software. The April robot battle helps launch that new partnership, he said.

He also noted that Artisan's Asylum offers classes in robotics for anyone who's interested. After a few classes, students may be able to participate in future competitions.