2022 Student Mechanism & Robot Design Competition (SMRDC)

Part of 2022 ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences (IDETC)

46th Annual Mechanisms & Robotics Conference (MR)

August 14th - August 17th, 2022 in St. Louis Missouri at the Union Station Hotel

************************************************

Winners' announcement of the SMRDC 2022

Graduate Group:

First Place: A Lightweight Robotic Knee Prosthesis with Torque-Sensitive Nonlinear Elastic Actuation, Minh Quang Tran, University of Utah, USA
Second Place: A Novel Tip-Stiffness Improved Compliant Continuum Robot Based on Anti-Buckling Universal Joints, Shiyao Li, Jiaxiang Zhu, Tinghao Liu, University College Cork, Ireland
Third Place: The VEMO Antenna: A Self-deploying, Self-stabilizing, Origami-based Antenna, Hunter Pruett, Nathan Coleman, Antonio Rubio, Brigham Young University, USA

Undergraduate Group:

First Place: A compliant Locking and Unlocking Mechanism for Launch Vehicle Applications, Shaojie Zhou,Huiwen Zhao, Guining Yu, Jiawen Wang, Feiyang Han, Dalian University of Technology, China
Second Place: A 4-Bar for a Hexapedal Walker, Joe Sommer and Joshua Hernandez, University of Notre Dame, USA
Third Place: Cable-driven reconfigurable robot based on tensegrity structures, Yi Zhang, Kaiwen Hu, Zhiwei Wang, Qingyu Bu, and Yuanqing Dong, Tianjin University, China

Congratulations!

************************************************

About

The ASME Student Mechanism and Robot Design Competition (SMRDC) is an excellent opportunity for undergraduate and graduate students to showcase their ability to design and build a mechanism or a robot.

For this competition, a mechanism is defined as:

"Any device that transmits a force or a motion to perform a mechanical task. It may consist of rigid or deformable bodies connected with kinematic or flexural joints. It may be constructed of any type of materials, including smart and other active materials. It may be actuated by means of any transduction principle and employ any form of energy input. The size of the device can range from the nano-scale to macro-scale."

A robot is defined as:

"An electro-mechanical system which, by its appearance or movements, conveys a sense that it has intent or agency of its own. A robot should be able to do some or all of the following: move around, operate a mechanical linkage, sense and manipulate their environment, and exhibit intelligent behavior, such as behavior that mimics humans or other animals. The size of a robot can range from the nano-scale to macro-scale."

The competition comprises two rounds:

Round 1 (Qualifying Round): Participants submit a Letter of Intent and a written report on their entry. All entries are evaluated by a panel of judges chosen from academe and industry. The top five entries in each category qualify for the next round.

Round 2 (Demo and Presentation): This round will be held at the 2022 ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences from August 14th - August 17th, 2022 in St. Louis Missouri at the Union Station Hotel. Each team will be required to make: