On March 22nd, the interdisciplinary Robotics Integrated Systems Design course taught by Drs. Jerry Weinberg, Cem Karacal, and George Engel had its third competition. In this competition students built and programmed robots to navigate a mock industrial accident site complete with soda-can barrels of hazard waste and a fire simulated by a light-bulb.

The robots that competed in this challenge were built primarily out of Lego bricks but with a more powerful controller than the typical Lego RCX. This controller was developed for academic and research institutions by Charmed Labs and has a single remarkable feature. The controller uses a Nintendo Gameboy Advance for its processor, memory, and human interface. The Gameboys have proven to be more reliable and faster than the custom-built microcontrollers used in past years and have the added benefit of being able to play Tetris.