igus gives articulated arm to the University of Southampton

Eurobot is an international amateur robotics contest open to teams of young people, organised either in student projects or in independent clubs. The challenge aims to foster and develop interest in robotics, asking the teams to build and design robots capable of completing set tasks without human control.

The UK final was held at Middlesex University with around 32 teams from five universities – Middlesex, Glasgow, Imperial, Birmingham and UoS.

Engineering students at the University of Southampton enter the Eurobot challenge as a second year project, which is part of their Systems Design & Computing module. This year’s theme ‘moon village’ saw robots competing to pick up lunar modules and different components on a 3 x 2 metre table.

“It’s a great way to teach system engineering and physical computing using Arduino,” says Dr. Stephen Prior, Reader in Unmanned Air Vehicles at the University of Southampton. “This is the fourth year that Southampton teams have entered Eurobot, and the fourth year that we have come first.”

The top three teams of the UK final – Southampton, Southampton and Glasgow – went on to the Eurobot World Championships held in La Roche-Sur-Yon, France where 100 teams from 30 countries competed. “We had a good time in France.

However, having won our first four matches out of five in the round robin phase, we had a system failure in the last match and scored no points,” recounts Dr. Prior. “Our second team didn't do too well in the early rounds, however, had a sprint in the last two matches, and just missed out on the top 16 team cut by six points.”

Although the two Southampton teams left France empty handed, they, along with their fellow students, will be focusing on learning the robolink system in the coming months and years. “We have used igus products in our projects and research – we believe the robolink articulated arm will be a great product for engineers and manufacturing.”