MSOE’s Raider Robotics team is on the road to the World Championship after winning the Design Award at the Purdue University Memorial VEX U Qualifier in February. The Design Award goes to the team with the strongest project management design process and team organization.

“We were all extremely excited,” said Nathan Dupont, Raider Robotics team lead. “There was a lot of screaming and cheering when MSOE was announced as the winner. This was our first tournament of the year and is traditionally one of the largest and most difficult tournaments before the World Championship. Winning the second highest judged award at this tournament is a huge accomplishment for us and gives us a lot of momentum moving into the World Championship.”

The Raider Robotics have been working hard over the last eight months to design a pair of robots for their competitions. The team’s dedication and collaboration proved to be effective, making their robots stand out from the other 14 universities at the competition and catch the eyes of the judges.

“Our team made massive technical accomplishments before the tournament. From becoming one of the first teams in VEX history to run open-source industry software packages on our robot, to creating our own printed circuit boards (PCBs) to control various electronics on our robot for less than 5% of the cost that teams normally buy them for.”

Unique to Raider Robotics, they’re the only team in the competition that keeps all of their work public and open-sourced for others to see. This allows other students and teams to learn from what they are doing.

The We Energies STEM Center at MSOE and resources within have been a gamechanger for the Raider Robotics. “Our robot used plenty of custom parts that were 3D printed in the STEM Center, which allow us to test out unique and effective designs on our robots,” said Dupont. “We have our competition field in the STEM Center as well, which allows us to practice with our designs before competition. This led for our designs to be effective in competition, along with providing many innovations that we could showcase to the judges at the event.”

Next up for the Raider Robotics is the World Championship which will be held in Dallas, Texas in early May. They took first place last year and are determined to defend their title. They plan to test out new designs on both of their robots and participate in scrimmages across the Midwest to assess and perfect their designs. “We have a lot to do before then, and already we have two new robots completely designed in CAD, ready to be manufactured. We will be spending the coming weeks and months iterating on our designs, improving our software and testing out as many crazy ideas as our team can come up with.”

Dupont emphasized the importance of teamwork that goes into making Raider Robotics a strong and successful team. With nearly 30 members, many of whom are new this year, there is a place for everyone to design, manufacture or program the robot while building valuable skills that can be applied to both schoolwork and future jobs and internships.

“We work on a lot more than just our robots. We also focus on teaching team members about important concepts in robotics, and spending time working on prototypes and designs our members find interesting and want to create. We use project management practices from software companies in the area in order to accomplish what we need during the season. Using these practices, we teach students how to work in teams on large projects and give them applicable skills that they can use in any industry. With these practices, we also let students pick areas that they want to work in, allowing them to expand their own interests while also helping improve what our team is working on.”

If you would like to learn more about Raider Robotics or make a donation to help fund their competitions, visit together.msoe.edu.