It was a crazy session, last weekend in Gemini. Some 75 enthusiastic students, split into 15 teams, spent two days devoted to a special challenge: to build a robot not only quick on its feet, but also able to play a decent game of soccer and, moreover, able to hold its own in a cage fight.

According to Max van Haren, one of the organizers, the winners took a particularly professional approach. “They made a special robot for each competition element, modularly designed so that they could reuse various parts.” This enabled the Dream Team, consisting wholly of Mechanical Engineering students, to amass the most points over the three elements.

While it cannot be said that every robot performed impressively, the sense of involvement among the participants was considerable, says mechanical engineer Van Haren. “Everyone stayed on until the end, and all the robots made it into the arena.”