Yearly, the coed robotic competitors in school 2.007 (Design and Manufacturing I) is centered round a unifying theme. From “Star Wars” to “Again to the Future” and “Willy Wonka,” the theme is mirrored within the gameboards the place robots designed and constructed by mechanical engineering college students compete for factors. On Thursday, Might 5, the occasion featured its most poignant theme so far: “Legacy,” a celebration of the competitors’s founder, the late Professor Emeritus Woodie Flowers.
Flowers impressed generations of future engineers as a professor at MIT, a co-founder of the worldwide FIRST Robotics Competitors, and host of the PBS sequence “Scientific American Frontiers.” His pedagogical strategy to hands-on schooling formed the engineering curriculum at MIT. In what was a radical instructional methodology on the time, Flowers integrated a spirited and boisterous competitors as a part of class 2.007 (then often known as 2.70).
“A testomony to Woodie’s influence on schooling at MIT is the truth that we nonetheless use basically the identical format for two.007 that he conceived of fifty years in the past. His spirit and his imaginative and prescient reside on in our class,” says Amos Winter, affiliate professor of mechanical engineering and co-instructor of two.007.
“We predict 2.007 performs such an vital function in coaching our college students to be extra like actual engineers, able to deal with open-ended, unstructured issues,” says Sangbae Kim, professor of mechanical engineering and co-instructor alongside Winter. “I’m very a lot honored to be an teacher, inheriting the pedagogical spirit of Woodie.”
Wearing bow ties and suspenders — a nod to Flowers’ sartorial model — Kim and Winter served as emcees for the night. Every spherical, two robots, constructed from a package of supplies circulated at the start of the semester, navigated a colourful, large gameboard. They competed for essentially the most factors by engaging in a sequence of duties in two minutes. The gameboard itself was impressed by Flowers.
“This 12 months’s competitors is a tribute to Woodie Flowers, who was our pal, our colleague, and was instrumental in lots of our careers. Tonight’s gameboard is impressed by lots of Woodie’s previous gameboards,” stated Winter as he launched the occasion.
The gameboard was modeled partially after the crosswalk in entrance of 77 Massachusetts Avenue. It’s divided by a banister, referencing a well-known {photograph} of Flowers sliding down the banister outdoors the Constructing 7 entrance on MIT’s campus. Robots have been tasked with gathering and manipulating balls, placing sq. pegs into spherical holes, and spinning a “woody flower” to maneuver balls right into a Pachinko board — all references to duties from competitions that Flowers designed when he launched the competitors within the Nineteen Seventies.
Sometimes taken sophomore 12 months, 2.007 usually offers many mechanical engineering college students with their first alternative to construct one thing primarily based on a design of their very own creation. They design and program their robots to perform duties on the competitors gameboards. College students have the choice of working their robots manually or by means of a mix of autonomous navigation and guide.
After almost 100 mechanical engineering college students competed within the first spherical on Wednesday, Might 4, the highest 32 college students got here again Thursday night time for the finals. Their robots confronted off in 5 sudden-death rounds, with the robotic scoring essentially the most factors continuing to the subsequent spherical.
The occasion culminated in a remaining showdown between a robotic designed by junior Joshua Rohrbaugh and a robotic designed by sophomore Nicholas Schultz. Finally, Rohrbaugh’s robotic “Salvo” got here out on high.
“General, my technique was high-risk, high-reward,” says Rohrbaugh, whose robotic scored 325 factors within the remaining spherical. “Salvo” included a number of projectile launchers to finish duties of urgent buttons and pulling a weighted pendulum with a grappling hook. The robotic additionally used a multistage elevate to boost a 2-kilogram weight, and a spring-loaded hook to spool in a rope.
Hovering over the gameboard was an indication with the phrase “Gracious Professionalism” embossed on it. The phrase, initially coined by Flowers, refers back to the act of being type and respecting others, even within the warmth of competitions like the two.007 robotic competitors. It grew to become his mantra.Flowers’ kindness and love for educating others was infectious. He had a profound influence, not solely on the scholars he taught, however on his colleagues. Originally of Thursday’s competitors, Professor Ely Sachs launched a video of colleagues, college students, and mentees describing the methods wherein Flowers formed their very own lives.
“Over the course of 47 years, I had the privilege to know Woodie Flowers as my advisor, my mentor, my colleague, and my cherished pal,” stated Sachs earlier than introducing the video. In a while, Sachs shared that Flowers’ perception that instructing was crucial career was instrumental in Sachs’ personal choice to develop into a professor.
Reflecting on the MIT Graduation handle she gave in 2015, Megan Smith ’86, SM ’88 stated that Flowers embodied MIT’s unofficial motto, “mens et manus et cor” — “thoughts and hand and coronary heart.” “Excited about kindness is as vital as information, if not in all probability extra,” stated Smith, who served as chief expertise officer for the US beneath President Obama. “His entire idea of gracious professionalism — and the way we deal with one another, how we embody one another, the breadth of our curiosity and the way we drive one another’s ardour. We miss him a lot”
Former 2.007 teacher and mentee Professor David Wallace concluded, “One can’t go away a greater legacy than a well-educated household, and Woodie, we’re your loved ones.”
Because the cheers of scholars crammed the voluminous Johnson Ice Rink, it was clear that Flowers and his legacy of “gracious professionalism” continues to reside on in MIT’s Division of Mechanical Engineering.
