Contest Unleashes Aquamania in Caltech’s Millikan Pond

Amphibious robots took to Millikan Pond on Tuesday, March 10, each one hoping to come away with the title “Aquamania champion.”

At the event, teams of students tested their robotic athletes in the 30th annual Mechanical Engineering 72 (ME72) competition—a campus tradition that also serves as a final exam for mechanical engineering students enrolled in the two-term ME72 design lab in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science.

In this year’s competition, the student teams were tasked with designing and building robots that could successfully drive down a ramp into Millikan Pond and then navigate through the water to move inflatable balls of various sizes past a series of gates.

At the end of each round, points were tallied based on how many balls each robot successfully moved past each gate. Eight teams competed for this year’s title, and after three intense (and very wet) rounds, team KATS—named for teammates and Caltech juniors Kristin Eliason, Auggie Nanz, Tammer Eweis-Labolle, and Sheila Lo—walked away with the trophy.

A robot enters the water during the first round of the competition. During the first 30 seconds of each round, the robots had to operate completely autonomously—meaning they had to be able to enter the water without any human intervention. Once the 30 seconds were over, the students were able to direct the robots through the water via remote control.