The Brobots is the junior team in iRobotics which started out as an all-freshman team 2 years ago (2011) in the Engineering Freshman Committee. We are excited to be part of the organization and are thankful for the limitless opportunities it brings to us. The team is captained by Ahmed Suhyl, a junior in Computer Engineering.
In 2011/2012, we had our first run at the Jerry Sanders Design Competition. We did very well as a freshman team and we came away with a consolation prize. Our robot was controlled via an Arduino connected to an Xbee which sent data to a remote Xbee module connected to a laptop via an Arduino. We had our own custom software to map Xbox 360 controllers to the robot’s movements and actions. In 2012/2013, we had a very competitive robot which had a similar setup like above but we took out the Xbee and instead placed the laptop on the robot. The mechanical side was very well built with a steel frame welded together, meccanum wheels, a turntable-elevator mechanism, suction grippers and a back claw powered by gearboxes, suction generators and a lot of pneumatics. We did very well but due to communication failures we did not make it into the finals. All of us have learned a lot from this experience and we are ready to tackle the upcoming season!