The SIUE team of Ross Mead, Jeff Croxell, and Jerry Weinberg took second place this last weekend at the national Beyond Botball competition. In a dramatic finish, the team, called Fishtank Assassin, lost the two final rounds of the double-elimination tournament to a team of engineers from Lockheed Martin. Previously, Fishtank Assassin had been undefeated and had even beat the team from Lockheed Martin in the semi-finals.

The National Botball competition, which attracts robot hobbyists, college teams, and teams of professional engineers, required building and programming autonomous robots for the removal of items representing toxic waste. The teams were also charged with the task of saving the mascot of the Botball competition, Botguy, from the toxic spill. Fishtank Assassin used a robot with color camera tracking, a five degree-of-freedom arm, and four-wheel drive to breeze through the double elimination competition, going undefeated into the finals.