 MSU's "Iron Horse" Travels to Seattle Robothon
It may not look human. It certainly doesn't look like a warrior.
But a sumo wrestler made by Montana State University-Bozeman
students is meant to battle fighters like Goliath and Broken Rib.
If Iron Horse is working right,
"It was just kind of a fun outside project," Chip Lukes, a
graduate student from Missoula, said of the robot he and other
members of the MSU Robotics Club built for this year's Seattle
Robothon. "At this level in school, a lot of stuff you do is just
textbook and disconnected from reality."
New and improved over last year's entry, Iron Horse might confuse
onlookers who expect the robot to look like a hefty android. He
has no face, after all, and weighs less than seven pounds. His
legs are wheels. His arms are poles that stretch two to three
feet in front of him. The aluminum box that serves as his body
hides his electronics.
"An android resembles a human," Lukes explained. "My definition
of a robot is anything that operates under its own control."
The students could have designed Iron Horse to make his way
through a maze or fight a fire. They might have made him smaller
and entered him in the mini-sumo competition. But they decided to
enter the sumo category, Lukes said, because they liked the idea
of two robots physically competing against each other. With no
help from their creators, the sumo robots find each other and try
to push each other out of an elevated ring.
"This is more of a crowd pleaser," Lukes commented. "There's a
large semi-circle around all the activities, but it gets much
larger when we're doing sumo wrestling."
Alex Lear from Alaska, a graduate student in electrical
engineering, said Iron Horse was programmed so one of its arms
would sweep across the ring and find its opponent. Then, the
other arm would trap it, and Iron Horse would charge forward.
Iron Horse, unfortunately, didn't work that way during
competition. Lukes, Lear, Baldwin Goodell of Louisiana and
Kristina Reinsch of West Yellowstone took him to Seattle, but
last-minute malfunctions kept him out of the April 28 Robothon
altogether.
The experience, nevertheless, was worthwhile, according to the
students.
"It was still fun to go down there and see all the other robots,"
Lukes said. "There were a lot of companies that set up, showing
off their high-tech stuff."
The competition also gave him ideas for next year's contest,
Lukes added.
Bob Gunderson, the club's advisor, said the club's mere existence
is noteworthy. Students organized the club and built their first
robot on their own. That sumo won third place in last year's
Robothon.
"I had a big robotics club in Utah," said Gunderson who is in his
first year at MSU. "I was very surprised to see what the guys and
gals here had done on their own."
Now in its second year, the robot club has ILX Lightwave Corp.,
Revelation Engineering and Steve Lovas of Horse of Iron as
sponsors. It has approximately 15 members, including Devin Cowan,
a 7th grader at Chief Joseph Middle School in Bozeman. An
electronics enthusiast who has a robot that can deliver milk and
another that starts a radio when it senses daylight, Cowan is
thrilled to belong to the club.
"I was so excited the first night I came home," he recalls. "It
was really great just to be around all this stuff and watch them
and ask them questions."
The club is a good way to interact with students in other
disciplines, the members said. It allows them to apply the
knowledge they've picked up in lectures and books. But the main
reason they participate is easy.
"It's mostly for fun," Lear said.
Evelyn Boswell
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