This morning, 16 student teams in UBC’s ENPH 253 class put on a fantastic show for a large crowd of proud parents, faculty, robot enthusiasts and local news crews. By the time the start of competition, it was standing room only in the packed lecture hall at the university’s iconic Hennings Building.

The event is the highlight of a 12-week prototyping course for second-year engineering physics students. The eager students would often work well into the evening, while most other university students would be out enjoying Vancouver’s tropical weather this summer.

For this year’s challenge, the teams had to develop a robot capable of driving itself through a obstacle course, guided by nothing more than its onboard computer. To make things fun and interesting, the robots were given the heroic task of rescuing six stuffed animals that were hypothetically trapped in “burning buildings” (represented by rolls of tape and paper). Each team would be scored according to the number of pets rescued, with bonus points given to robots that managed to rescue the pet hiding in the bucket of foam chips.

It was an exciting display of engineering talent, innovation and robot altruism. In each nail-biting round, the teams wowed the crowd with their creativity and unique approaches to the challenge. One robot featured a detachable cart that mobilized to deliver the pets to safety as it’s counterpart continued through the obstacle course, while another team used a zipline to save them. Although some robots couldn’t rescue the pets in time, it was a good-natured competition and everyone seemed to have a blast.

“The challenge is different every year,” said instructor Jon Nakane. “We’ve had hockey-bots and police-bots, build-bots and doctor-bots. The students get a chance to design every aspect of their robots—the electronics, mechanics and computer programs — in under five weeks.”

We are definitely looking forward to next year’s competition, and we’re sure to be impressed by the amazing young talent and level of innovation.

Here are some photos of the event below. See more on our Twitter feed. And check out this post from UBC’s Engineering Physics department.

The 6th pet is hiding in the box of foam chips at the top of the course

H.A.L.P. took 3rd place at the competition. This bot had, among many other great qualities, a super reliable pincher.

Awesome detachable cart allowed this robot to rescue many stu