Years of practice and putting engineering skills to work will culminate in a laundry competition for the UB Robotics Club when they head to Knoxville, Tenn., on Sept 8 to face opposing robotics clubs.
In Tennessee the club will take part in a television competition that will schedule teams of three, each representing a college, against one another in a fourteen-team tournament. Each team's task is to build a device that will launch tee shirts into a washing machine from a variety of assigned places.
Though the four-year old club is just a "toddler," as former president and current club officer Yan Shtarker puts it, it is part of the undergraduate Student Association's Engineering Club Council.
The show that the club is scheduled to appear on, "Robot Rivals," airs on the Do It Yourself Network, a division of Scripps Productions. The series produced by Larsen Jay - whose production resume includes feature films like Universal Soldier, Duets and Erin Brockavich - rewards ingenuity and quick thinking as the teams must build a three cubic foot robot from scratch.
Each team has only eight hours to accomplish this goal by using materials provided by the network, while explaining to the cameras what they are building and how they are doing it.
"Let's show them how to do it," said Jay, "and make it fun."
The DIY Network, seen by 20 million viewers, searched the country for teams worthy of competing for the $2,000 grand prize. UB Robotics was discovered by Jay and his staff via the Internet.
"The bulk of our research is through the Web," Jay explains. "Which is how we found Buffalo. We just went to their site and sort of cold called them."
"It's not a matter of G.P.A. or prestige," he added. "We look for who's best for the show and is active in the robotics community."
"It's good that they noticed us," says Michael Licitra, president of UB Robotics. "It highlights the engineering school and the whole university."
"The other schools got a lot of exposure," adds Shtarker, referring to the first season of "Robot Rivals." "It should be good for the school and good experience for us."
UB Robotics, whose listserv boasts more than 100 addresses, really has closer to 15 active members, which is not a problem, according to Shtarker.
"We can't take more than 20 people - we'd have to have separate projects," he said, though he added the club is actively seeking new members.
While their first round competitors, the Colorado School of Mines has yet to report back to Jay and the DIY production team, Licitra and Shtarker have had their assignment for a week and are already testing designs for their Sept. 9 taping.
"We'll be using an air cannon. It shoots a tee shirt at 20 pounds per square inch, and it only needs to go 13 feet or so," Shtarker explains. "They have a lab full of equipment and they have basic tools. You go there with an idea, and you build it there."
"We could definitely win the first round," says Shtarker. "After that, it's hard to tell who we're up against."
The 14-team field includes formidable opponents, including Duke University, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Rochester, Princeton, Dartmouth, Ohio University and the University of Central Florida.
Jay was quick to point out that the name and reputation of one's school means little on a show like "Robot Rivals."
"All the brainiac, super-smart nerds come in confident," said Jay. "But it's the nuts and bolts guys who win."
"Last season," Jay said, "the brainiacs at Harvard lost to the nuts and bolts team from Kentucky."
Though UB Robotics is simply a student club, its members keep their eyes on the progress of large scale robotics and make predictions for the future of robots.
"With a lot of robotics research it's hard to find a purpose," Licitra said, "A lot happens in graduate student labs and they do stuff just because it's cool. Honda has a robot to get the newspaper," he explained, referring to ASIMO, an advanced humanoid robot that can accomplish simple tasks.
"I think you'll see handicap assistance," says Shtarker about the future of applied robotics. "But mostly things on assembly lines which are already well-developed." For now he said, "things that are closer to human is more novelty than reality."
UB's team will debut on the third episode of Season Two, airing in early 2004.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
