ASME Student Design Competition: The Pick-and-Place Race

The 2019 ASME Student Design Competition, named the Pick and Place Race, entailed picking balls ranging from the size of ping pong balls to basketballs off PVC pipes and placing them into a scoring area. The venue for the competition was the Fairplex Complex in Pomona, California. This competition was a great way to network while representing the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of the Pacific. The goal was to design and fabricate a robot to win the 2019 ASME Student Design Competition. To do this, the RamBot 5000 was designed to collect as many balls as fast as possible by maximizing its capacity and ramming the balls off of their stands. The strategy focused on restricting the opponent’s ability to score and place. During the competition, the strategy of ramming the balls off the PVC pipes was the most dominant. By the third and final day, those teams that survived, switched to this “ramming” style. Of the 22 teams entered, the RamBot 5000 ended up placing fourth. This was a huge accomplishment, since most teams had significantly more members and funding. This event was a huge success for Pacific as well, since no students had entered the student design competition for the last two years. All objectives were accomplished; the robot was successful in its design and highly competitive