LSU to Host 2nd Annual Bengal Bot Brawl

March 20, 2018
Bengal Bot Brawl Robot

BATON ROUGE – Two robots enter; only one remains when all is said and done. LSU’s Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering will host the second annual Bengal Bot Brawl on Tuesday, April 10, from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., in the Patrick F. Taylor Hall Commons.

The sumo-style robotics competition, which was created to make engineering design fun for students, has a new trick up its sleeve this year – anyone can challenge the champion.

“This year will be different,” said Marcio de Queiroz, LSU ME professor and coordinator of the LSU Robotics Engineering Minor. “They are allowing anyone from outside the competition to bring in a robot and challenge the champion. This includes middle school and high school students; though literally anyone with a robot that meets the criteria can challenge the winner.”

Bengal Bot Brawl, also known as B3, will have four teams competing in the round-robin competition. Three of the teams are comprised of LSU ME and Electrical and Computer Engineering capstone design students, while the fourth is made up of members of the LSU Bengal Reauxbotics Club.

The rules parallel those of the national Robot Battles competitions. Robots must be no more than 30 lbs. – the weight category LSU has chosen – and cannot expel any liquids. They also cannot exceed a certain RPM and should be able to operate on at least two frequencies or have a digital transmitter cable of non-conflicting frequencies to avoid radio frequency conflicts.

The winner of the B3 competition will compete, with all expenses paid, in Robot Battles at MomoCon in Atlanta on May 24-27.

Mia Reed, an ME sophomore from New Orleans, is the project manager for the Bengal Reauxbotics Team at the competition.

“We are recycling robot parts that were donated to us from last year’s B3 competition,” she said. “We probably started working on the robots in November. We might make two robots this year. I haven’t decided.”

De Queiroz said the competition is meant to not only show that engineering design can be fun, but to promote the LSU Robotics Engineering Program, which is only three years old.

“We also find that it helps in recruiting local high school students,” he said.

The event will be livestreamed on the College of Engineering’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/lsuengineering.

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Contact: Libby Haydel
Communications Specialist
225-578-4840 (o)
ehaydel1@lsu.edu