Teams announced for the NI 2011 Autonomous Robotics competition

National Instruments Oceania has announced the competing teams for the inaugural National Instruments Autonomous Robotics Competition, a student robotics competition designed to encourage development and innovation in the field of robotics.

The 2011 competition, which will be taking place from April to September 2011, will feature teams representing the country’s top universities, with each team developing an autonomous robot that will ultimately compete in a live competition with the objective of autonomously completing a set of predefined tasks in the shortest amount of time, while earning the most points.

“The NI Autonomous Robotics Competition is an exciting initiative which will provide engineering students with an ideal platform to develop and showcase their technical and creative skills and capabilities,” said Matej Krajnc, Branch Director for National Instruments Oceania. “We have been very impressed with the quality of team applications and are looking forward to a challenging, competitive and highly enjoyable 2011 competition. ”Students will also get the opportunity to work with NI engineers throughout the process and compete at the live competition in September, which will attract a large audience from industry and academia and providing a great opportunity for the students to showcase their talents.”

Teams from the following universities will be competing in the 2011 competition:

• Curtin University
• Macquarie University
• Queensland University of Technology
• Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
• Swinburne University of Technology
• University of Adelaide
• University of New South Wales
• University of Sydney
• University of Tasmania
• University of Technology, Sydney

The robotics application areas of focus for this year's competition will be navigation, obstacle avoidance and object handling. Each team has received a development kit featuring an NI CompactRIO embedded acquisition and control system and the NI LabVIEW 2010 Robotics Suite for the development of their autonomous robot. Maxon Motor has also provided each team with a gift voucher for purchase of Maxon motors. All teams that successfully complete the competition, regardless of their finishing position, will get to keep the development kit. There is also a first prize of $3000 and runners-up prize of $1500, based on the results of the live national competition on 16 September, 2011.

Training, mentoring, and competition objectives will also be provided by NI Application Engineers who specialise in robotics applications. To learn more about the 2011 NI Autonomous Robotics Competition visit: www.ni.com/oceania/ni-arc.