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Mexican students win six medals at RoboGamesMEXICO CITY, Jun 22, 2009 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- Students from a Mexican university won a gold medal, two silver medals and three bronze medals in this year's RoboGames, an annual robot contest that drew some 500 competitors from 25 countries, the university said Monday. The state-run National Polytechnic Institute sent 23 students with 45 home-made robots to compete in four events of the competition in the U.S. city of San Francisco, the university said in a statement. Erick Rodriguez and Rogelio Baeza took gold in the line-follow event with Pontiac, a prototype equipped with infra-red sensors and color detectors. The pair also won a bronze medal for the 1-pound automatic combat. "Taking part gave us the opportunity to test our knowledge against students from other nations, and proved that we are at the same level or better than other students from famous schools," Rodriguez said. Manuel Vallejo, Rogelio Guadarrama, Mario Jimenez and Manuel Leon took sliver in the 1-pound automatic combat, where two robots clash until one is destroyed or immobilized. Another silver medal went to Ruben Bravo and Emelyn Delgado in the 500-gram automatic mini-sumo event. Humberto Mejia, Jorge Renteria and Adrian Oveido won bronze in the 100-gram automatic mini-sumo. Rodriguez, Baeza, Bravo, and Delgado made another robot for the 500-gram automatic sumo which won bronze. All the robots were designed by the students and made by recycled parts from video cameras, videocassettes and still cameras. RoboGames, previously ROBOlympics, was founded in 2004 by U.S. engineer David Calkins as a forum for robot makers to exchange ideas and learn from each other's experience. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, RoboGames is the world's largest open robot contest where competitors from all over the world compete in 70 different events. |