The task: from a standard box of parts, build a shoebox-sized robot. This robot’s goal: move around on a designated surface, swing a weighted pendulum, and/or pick up objects and put them into a bin. It is not nearly as mundane as it sounds -- designing a remote-controlled robot to strict specifications, and manipulating the engineering calculations to ensure it will work is no simple feat. It requires an advanced amount of collaboration and creativity. And it's the challenge facing competitors in the 2002 International Design Competition (IDC), held August 16 at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Teams of students from eight leading universities -- from the U.S., the United Kingdom, Germany, Brazil and Japan -- are competing to design a robot, each made from the same set of parts. The winning team creates the robot that, in the 45 seconds allotted, moves the pendulums the most or puts the most mass into the bins.
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