Last May, eleven ESILV robotics students from the DaVinciBot Association took part in the French Robotics Cup. This competition, organised by Planète Sciences, aims to promote science to young people. The theme of the 2023 edition was “The cherry on the cake”.
The French Robotics Cup brought together nearly a hundred teams from all over France in La Roche-sur-Yon. The competition consisted of five hundred-second rounds to autonomously score as many points as possible once the competitors had launched the robots.
Scoring points in the 2023 edition required the robots to pick up cakes and bring them back to each team’s respective zone, pick up cherries and throw them into a basket to proceed to count them.
The technologies used by the ESILV engineering students’ robots
Regarding the technologies used by the ESILV students, each robot was equipped with a Raspberry Pi board programmed in Python, a LIDAR for scanning the environment, detecting opponents and avoiding them, and Teensy boards programmed in C++. This year, the students experimented with different types of motors.
One of the robots was equipped with conventional DC motors, while the other used stepper motors. Most of the actuators were powered by servomotors.
DaVinciBot robots
The competition day by day
The first day was devoted to the teams’ arrival and the robots’ certification. The students succeeded in certifying the first robot in both the static phase (compliance with dimensions and safety standards) and the dynamic phase (the ability of the robot to score points and avoid collisions with the opposing team’s robot). The second robot was only certified in the static phase on Wednesday and then in the dynamic phase on Thursday.
The second day was marked the start of the qualifying rounds. Only one robot took part in the first match, but it had to give up (0 points due to a bad start). After this incident, the students solved the problem and got the robot up and running.
They then competed against the veteran Goldorak team. The final score was 34 points for the ESILV students against 63 for the opposing team.
On the third day, the students played two matches. They took on the AstroMonkeys team in the third match, scoring 51 points to 67.
For the fourth match, they benefited from a favourable refereeing decision due to a compliance problem during the launch of the robots.
On the final day, the engineering students played their last match against the competition leaders, the VRAC team of former students from the Cachan IUT.
As this was their last match, they were confident about their game strategy despite their sleepless nights working out the previous few problems..
Their final score was 65 to VRAC’s 71. However, one of their props should have accounted for the displaced cherries, resulting in a miscalculation of the score and costing them the win.
The French Robotics Cup 2023 Broadcast
You can watch the final of the Cup, which was broadcast live on 20 May 2023.
Classification and strategy for next year
At the end of this qualifying phase, the students finished in 46th place out of around a hundred teams.
The engineering students are already thinking about a new strategy for next year. They aim not to start from scratch but to re-use electronic boards, models and code to design more reliable robots and reduce the risk of abandonment.
DaVinciBot members outside the French Robotics Cup facilities
The last match showed the students that they could design a robot that complies with the game strategy defined in the specifications. They must maintain motivation throughout the year so the robots are ready as soon as possible.
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