A team of Union engineering students
will face off against their counterparts from Dartmouth
College next week on the
Do-It-Yourself (DIY) TV Network's new show, Robot
Rivals.
The competition will be taped on
Nov. 13 in Knoxville, Tenn.
The air date has not been set.
Robot Rivals premiered last spring. The show pits student teams in
a grueling competition to build a robot to complete a task. In previous shows
teams have had to build robots that climb flights of stairs or cross a river
with a self-contained bridge. Each team gets access to the show's “robot
laboratory” and a team of experts who can assist. The robot must be designed,
built and prepared to compete in a matter of hours.
“This competition is a great
opportunity for our engineering students to show that they are some of the
brightest in the nation,” said Bob Balmer, dean of engineering. “The producers
of the show researched the best engineering colleges in the country and of
course found Union to be one of them.”
If Union
defeats Dartmouth, they will
advance to the second round the next day.
Fourteen teams from all over the country are competing in the single
elimination tournament. If Union wins in the first and
second rounds they will return to Tennessee
in December for the semi-finals. The champions will receive the J.F.
Engelberger Trophy which is presented by the “father of industrial robotics”
himself and a $2,000 prize awarded to the College's robotics club.