Lego Sumo Robot

I was one of 100 high school juniors accepted to the New Jersey Governor School of Technology. During part of the month-long program at Rutgers, we made robots from the Lego Mindstorms kit. The final robot project was a sumo wrestling match. Two robots would face off and attempt to push each other out of the ring. The robots could use light sensors to detect the edge of the ring, and had to start at size smaller than 10x10x10cm.

My team's robot (on the right) was the biggest of the 20 in the contest. It used two large, high friction wheels driven by worm gears to prevent back-driving. In the front it had vertically mount treads designed to lift an opponent off the ground, stealing its traction. It also had a telescoping arm that shifted the center of mass of the robot back over the wheels.

The robot was unstoppable when faced head-on, but was vulnerable when turning. In the final match, even though we knocked our opponent off in the first round, they beat us in the next 2 rounds by pushing from the side. We came in second.