by R. Steven Rainwater
The American Society of Agricultural & Biological Engineers (ASABE) is an educational and scientific organization that promotes the advancement of engineering and science. Among many other activities, ASABE sponsors an annual
robotics competition for graduate and undergraduate university students.
The ASABE Student Robotics Competition presents students with a different agriculturally-themed contest each year.
For the 2012 contest, teams of students designed and built autonomous robots that were required to navigate a scale
model of a cattle feedlot. The robots had to move along rows of cattle pens divided by fences. Each pen had a feed
container. Feed was represented by a cargo of 6 mm Airsoft pellets which was carried by the robots. At the start of each
run, a judge provided the contestant with an SD card containing the required weight of feed to be dropped into each pen's
feed container by the robot. Each run was timed.
Robot moving down
When a run was completed, the feed containers from each pen
were weighed. Teams were awarded points based on objective
measures such as the speed and accuracy of their robot, and for
subjective qualities such as the elegance of design. Teams lost points
when their robot struck fences surrounding
the pens, required human assistance to
complete a run, or dropped feed outside of
a feed container. At first glance, this contest
looks similar to a lot of other student robot
contests but the addition of the feed pellets
added some interesting and fun dynamics.
When a robot missed the feed container
and dumped a load of pellets onto the
ground, it didn't just lose points; it created
an obstacle for itself as it had to navigate
through the rolling, bouncing flood of
pellets to get to the next pen.
The contest is held every year at the ASABE International Meeting.
If you get a chance, it's definitely worth checking out. SV
You can read more about the ASABE Student Robotics Competition at
You can find out more about the ASABE organization at
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