Turtle-bot heads into battle

The University of Auckland team (from left) Michael Li, Matthew Boyes, Brook Dyer, Kirsten Johnston, Briony Forsberg and Simon Gray have high hopes for their robot, nicknamed Turtle-bot. Photo / Dean Purcell

New Zealand university students are about to battle international competition to decide who has built and programmed the best robot.

A team from the University of Auckland will today fly to Sydney - with their hopes pinned on a creation nicknamed "Turtle-bot".

Thirty teams will battle it out for the title and $3000 first prize at the Australasian National Instruments Autonomous Robotics Competition.

Thursday's competition focuses on agriculture, which is experiencing increasing demand for robotics.

Each team's creation will need to complete tasks such as collect and deposit seeds, and navigate a farm area littered with obstacles.

Michael Li, one of six students who make up the University of Auckland team, undertook the challenge as part of a final-year project in his mechatronics engineering degree.

The 21-year-old and one other were tasked with the mechanical design of the robot, and built it from scratch. The other members focused on the coding and intelligence of the machine.

It took about six months to set up the robot, which has been nicknamed "Turtle-bot" because of its round shape.

Mr Li said: "Building this robot taught us a lot of mechanical design, electrical design, and a little bit of programming."

Ready, set, robot
• University teams to take part in a competition in which they design and build robots, and then have them complete certain tasks.
• The University of Auckland machine took about six months to build.
• Final is held in Sydney on Thursday.
• Other New Zealand universities competing are the Manukau Institute of • Technology, Massey University and Victoria University of Wellington.