NKU's student robotics team — NUKE Robotics — returns from the 2022 VEX Robotics World Championship ranked fourth overall in head-to-head competition within the technology division in the team's first full year of competition. The team advanced up the bracket, winning their first matchup in the Round of 16, but falling to Purdue in the quarterfinals. The event was held in Dallas on May 3-5.
In the robot skills competition — stressing the design of the robot, the skill of the operator, and the robot's ability to operate autonomously — the team faced off with 74 world-ranked teams to score as many points as possible in a one-minute period by acquiring, lifting, moving and dropping various objects. Here, they also showed impressively, placing fourth overall. The performance elevates the team's skills ranking to number 2 worldwide.
The team built two robots — affectionately named Fat Man and Little Boy — which can be both controlled by a driver and operate autonomously.
The team is helmed by co-captains Spencer Yates (junior, Applied Software Engineering) and McKay Dunn (sophomore, Pre-Engineering). The team is rounded out by Ian Gentry (sophomore, Pre-Engineering), Eric Hansen (sophomore, Physics), Nathan Reed (freshman, Computer Science) and Ashton Davey (freshman, Data Science). The faculty sponsors for the club are Dr. Junxiu Zhou from the College of Informatics and Dr. Mahdi Yazdanpour from the College of Arts and Sciences.
You can learn more about the competition game this season —
called Tipping Point — at youtube.com/watch?v=H8XcvADUXTE.
