The Texas A&M chapter of Robomasters, or TAMU Robomasters, provides students with real-world engineering experience through building and constructing robots in preparation for international collegiate competitions.
The Robomaster North American Competition, or The Lone Star Competition, hosted by the TAMU Robomasters team, will consist of 15 teams from Italy, Canada and the U.S. who will compete June 25-27 in the Memorial Student Center, or MSC.
Robomasters is a live competition where collegiate teams compete against one another with robots that shoot projectiles. Competitors control the robots from a first-person perspective with the objective to eliminate other teams’ robots.
This year, mechanical engineering sophomore and TAMU Robomaster team member Dillan Gay said the team is looking forward to expanding their reach and competition.
“This is usually something that’s only platformed in Shenzhen, China, to mainland Chinese teams,” Gay said. “To be able to host a platform that’s for a western region in general, not just one area in America, but for everybody that’s not able to go to the mainland Chinese competition is a big statement for what we are capable of technically, and how excited we can get for engineering and robotics in general. So we’re really excited for that.”
Communication senior and team marketing member Kenzie Guillamun said she feels Robomasters offers opportunities and experiences to more than just engineering students.
“We have sides of business that [are] ultimately essential and relatively fun,” Guillamun said. “It’s super fun looking at robots being built, and getting to capture that moment. Again, even on the engineering side, it’s just super interesting to see how they can produce something as cool as that. One big thing is how we’re kind of outreaching towards youth, too. Going to high schools, going to middle schools and ultimately showing our robots off to youth that are probably interested in robotics.”
Team member and engineering sophomore Dominic Paone said Robomasters allows him to apply his classroom experiences to the real world.
“In classes like [Mechanical Engineering] 261, we learned [computer-aided design] and how to manufacture things,” Paone said. “We’re actually taking those things we’ve learned and applying them to robots. We also do things like, soldering and building electrical boards for systems and pneumatic wiring and wiring of electrical systems. Things that we would only be doing on paper in a class, we’re actually applying and using for real competition.”
Guillamun said she is looking forward to more youth engagement compared to previous years.
“Even though we do have the collegiate competition going on they do have something really fun for kids that are really interactive,” Guillamun said. “We have prizes that are going to be going on and also kids get to practice using robots …We have small youth competitions that will be happening, along with the competition with the universities. I think that’s going to be really fun and engaging towards kids who just want to learn about robots.”
Gay said he is excited for the amount of viewers to increase from last year’s competition.
“I was a primary person involved with outreaching to the Bryan-College Station community to those high schools that we talked about,” Gay said. “Seeing them get just as excited as I did — to see that individual excitement get ingrained in people is really what I’m most excited for, and to do it in the form that I’m able to is a perfect dream.”
The main event area will take place in Bethancourt Ballroom in the MSC, with side competitions taking place in the Student Recreation Center. The event is open to all spectators and will be live streamed on Twitch at twitch.tv/robomasterna.
