Swinburne team wins 2011 NI Autonomous Robotics Competition

Student teams from 10 of Australia’s top universities recently competed in the inaugural National Instruments Autonomous Robotics Competition, a student competition focused on inspiring student innovation in the field of robotics. The final live national competition was hosted by National Instruments at NIDA in Kensington, NSW, on 16 September 2011.

The winners of the 2011 competition were Team SUAVE from Swinburne University of Technology in Victoria, with Team RMIT CRITTER from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology taking out second place. Team SUAVE received a winner’s prize of $3000 with Team RMIT CRITTER receiving $1500 for second place. In addition, all teams that successfully competed on the day will maintain ownership of the competition development kits provided by National Instruments, which included NI LabVIEW and an NI CompactRIO embedded acquisition and control system.

“We were thrilled with the efforts of all the competing teams in the inaugural NI Autonomous Robotics Competition,” said Mark Phillips, Marketing Manager for National Instruments Oceania. “Our competition winners, Team SUAVE from Swinburne University, completed all the defined tasks in just over three minutes; a fantastic achievement given that we had allowed up to 10 minutes for each team. Additionally, every team had a unique approach to the development of their autonomous robot. We can’t wait to see how the competing teams in the 2012 competition build on the innovation demonstrated this year.”

The competition tasks and objectives required students to demonstrate their skills in the robotics application areas of navigation, object handling and obstacle avoidance by developing an autonomous robot that would complete a set of predefined tasks in the shortest amount of time at the live competition, and ultimately earn them the most points. National Instruments provided each team with a development kit featuring NI LabVIEW graphical system design software and a CompactRIO embedded acquisition and control system required to enable the development and control of their autonomous robot, as well as training and mentoring for all the students. Maxon Motor also provided each team with a voucher for the purchase of precision motors.

The live event also featured several presentations from National Instruments engineers and competing student teams, as well as a guest keynote presentation by Professor Peter Corke, Professor of Robotics & Control, School of Engineering Systems at Queensland University of Technology.

Teams from the following universities were involved in the 2011 competition:

• Curtin University
• Macquarie University
• Queensland University of Technology
• Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
• Swinburne University of Technology
• University of Adelaide
• University of New South Wales
• University of Sydney
• University of Tasmania
• University of Technology Sydney

The 2012 competition will also feature teams from New Zealand universities, and it is expected that up to 20 teams will compete in the annual competition.