Overview, Competition, ART, Soccer, Combat, Sumo, UT-FIRST, Competition, Overview, Overview, Competition, Overview, Competition

The University of Toronto FIRST Robotics mentorship program works to assist high schools in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) participate in the "FIRST Robotics" competition each year. This highly successful annual event has been running for over 20 years, and over a million high school students have participated from across North America and the world. In this competition teams of high school students, sponsored and assisted by local companies and volunteers, design, assemble, and test a robot capable of performing a specified task in competition with other teams. Skills in mechanical, electrical, and computer engineering are developed.

UTFIRST is a faculty-wide initiative to foster good design principles and encourage current high school students to pursue further study in engineering. The program works with several high schools across the GTA during the 6 week build period in January-February of each year. Our mentors go out to the different schools for a few hours each week to work with the students and help them develop a functional and efficient robot to participate in the competitions each spring. UTFIRST is currently recruiting mentors for its 2011-2012 build season. The commitment is only a few hours per week to visit your chosen school and mentor the students in design from January - Reading Week. Please not that skills in Robotics are NOT a requirement to be a mentor. If you are interested in joining the UTFIRST team please email Patricia, at patricia@mie.utoronto.ca , and I will see you at our first meeting in mid-October.

Read more about USFIRST at http://www.firstroboticscanada.org/main/ and http://www.usfirst.org/

July 22-23, 2011, University of British Columbia, British Columbia

UTRA flew 7 members across the country to British Columbia to compete in RobotRacing 2011 hosted by UBC. For this competition, UTRA designed and built the robot from the chassis and drive system to the PCBs circuitry.

(From left to right) Marc Ovsec, Raymond Lam, Wilson Tan, Billy Jun, Paul Giampuzzi, Zongyi Yang, Gabriel Ongpauco

Drag Race Competition (3rd Place)

The drag race competition pits 2 robots against one another on a 30m long straightaway to see which one is the fastest (while staying within the track).

UTonomous proved that raw speed alone is not enough to succeed in this competition, control is needed too.

Circuit Race Competition

In the circuit race competition, robots must navigate through a course outlined by pylons while stopping at stop signs or traffic lights, going up/down ramps and avoiding other robots.

UTonomous was one of the few robots that were able to successfully navigate the course.

Thanks to everyone who helped out with UTonomous and we'll be looking to improve it for next year.

Special Thanks to the Jun family for providing us with delicious Korean food during our stay in Vancouver and the Festejo family for picking us up from Vancouver airport and providing UTRA with some transit passes.

UTRA is re-establishing their robot soccer team beginning this summer! We are currently in the preliminary phases of organizing a team together and would welcome any interested students from the MIE, EE, & CS disciplines. Our goals as of now are to get two pre-built robots to pass a ball autonomously with the help of a vision sensor by the end of summer. In the coming school year we will begin the design phase for our team of robots (five in total) in hopes of getting our foot in the international robocup competitions the following year for the small size league.

For those interested, questions will be welcomed and can be sent to Geoffrey.Louie@utoronto.ca.

May 6-8, 2011, Valcartier Garrison, Quebec

University of Toronto placed 2nd in the 2011 UGV (Unmanned Ground Vehicle) competition hosted by Unmanned Systems Canada. This was the first time this competition was run and UTRA was proud to be a part of it. Nine members drove 9 hours straight from Toronto to Quebec and arrived at the Canadian Forces Military Base at ~3:00-4:00 am. Unfortunately it rained through most of the 1st and 2nd day causing the competition to be moved indoors.

This was the first time UTRA has designed an autonomous robot of such a large scale and numerous problems were expected. A few temporary patches (like changing the outdoor logic to indoor logic) were made during the competition. Overall, the competition provided valuable experience for the team and gave us a good idea on how to move forward and improve our robot.

UTRA looks forward to bringing home the gold for the next competition.

April 15-17, 2011: 17 Countries, 59 Events, 239 Teams, 677 Entries, 680 Robots, and 950 Engineers

Gold Medal - 120 lbs Combat Robots

University of Toronto won the Gold medal for the second year in a row in RoboGames 2011. This was one out of two Canadian medals won at this year's RoboGames.

TSA Inspected defended its title in the finals against Maloney (representing Brazil).

Gold Medal From RoboGames 2011

TSA Inspected Vs. Touro

TSA Inspected Vs Maloney

(More Videos and Pictures coming soon!)

Check out RoboGame for the results.

On Saturday, July 24th, 2010, UTRA's Autonomous Rover Team (ART) attended the Robot Racing competition at the University of Windsor. The team arrived in the city of Windsor a day earlier on Friday, July 23rd at 5:00 AM (five team members boarded the 1 AM Greyhound; talk about dedication!). Click on the picture to read more about what happened.

Top Row: Tae Young Goh, Billy Jun, Zongyi Tang, Wen Cheng Chong, Arian Omidzohour, Justin Tai, Wilson Tan Bottom Row: Jessica Xie, Tina Wang, Chia Chen Tan Missing from photo: Rehman Merali, Soroush "Soren" Massoumi, Pouyan Aminian, Kirolos Athanassious, Brendan Wong, Dylan Drover