PiE 2015 Competition Awards

Written by PiE Team on Apr 28, 2015

Congratulations Albany and Head Royce, the winners of the 2015 Competition!

It’s been quite a semester. We were happy to see a wide variety of strategies this year. The teams thought outside the box, and for the first time, almost every team had some form of autonomous. The basis of the game this year was to take food objects off the rotating center table, then transport these objects to tables on the field — and some of these tables needed to be flipped over by the robot. Students came up with many interesting mechanical designs coupled with good software, and we were excited to see them play on the field this weekend.

Good engineering does not go unrewarded! Every year, we gather judges together to award teams who demonstrate qualities that we value: creative engineering designs, teamwork and spirit, and hard work throughout the season. Here are the winners of the the awards this year:

**Engineering Professionalism: Albany**

Albany demonstrated and executed top engineering qualtiies, focusing on the entire engineering process. They took a professional approach to solving problems, programming, modeling, as well as testing and prototyping.

**Engineering Journalism: Albany**

CAD drawings, videos, documentation, journals, AND a simulation of their robot mechanisms?

Albany’s engineering journal went above and beyond the expectations of the judges. It was very clear that they put a lot of thought and hard work throughout the entire semester into their documentation and design. We’ve linked a video of their robot in action here.

**Mechanical Design: Balboa**

Balboa’s screen door nomnom delivering device worked very well due to Balboa’s meticulous effort in their mechanical design. In order to get the actuation just right, the team utilized their CAD skills and created several models of their device. Once they finalized the design, they submitted it to our Berkeley machinists, who spent some time making the idea a reality.

**Software, Sensors, and Control: Lionel Wilson**

According to Rohan, one of the judges for this year, the competition for this award has never been more competitive than it was this year.

“I was very impressed by the overall quality of software that all the teams had, plus some teams went above and beyond with multiple sensors — light detection, limit switches, encoders, and potentiometers,” he says.

This recipient of this award goes to Lionel Wilson. While other teams struggled to either flip the wooden table or activating the gatekeeper, Lionel Wilson’s robot extremely consistently autonomous mode allowed this robot to do both very well!

**TI Spirit Award: McClymonds and REALM**

Two teams received the award for spirit this year. PiE heavily values spirit because, as Terry Johnson, one of the judges this year, puts it:

“How you react when things don’t work as expected is one of the most important things about being an engineer.”

Just moments after being eliminated, REALM used their robot to entertain kids around LHS. Their team showed excellent attitude throughout the competition.

McClymonds is a school that overcame many challenges just to be a part of the competition. No matter what happened, they showed that they wanted to be part of the competition and did the best they could with what they had.

**Judges’ Award: Oakland Tech**

Finally, the Judges’ Award, one of the most prestigious awards that can be given in the PiE competition, was awarded to the team that demonstrated an awesome, well-rounded robot.

Oakland Tech incorporated good software with a great mechanical design, and thoroughly impressed both staff and judges alike.