Each year, the CU Boulder Robotics Team competes in the Robomaster North American University League Championship, held at different college campuses throughout the US. I was on the team for all three years of my attendance at CU Boulder, starting in April of 2022 and ending in June of 2024.
The competition we participated in was part of a larger annual series in which over 400 universities from around the world have eight months to build a fleet of robots to compete in the 1v1 and the 3v3 confrontations. The game is played in a head-to-head format, where one team pits their fleet against another. Some robots are driven by human operators via a first person view camera, while other robots are fully autonomous and must rely on AI object detection, real-time localization, and agile decision making.
From August 2022 to June 2023, I officially served as the Director of Manufacturing, where I established a streamlined communication process for team members to request the fabrication of parts. With this increase of communication, I was able to decrease manufacturing times from two weeks to three days, and the system I put in place is still in use today. While I was on the team until the end of my Senior year in 2024, I unfortunately had to step back from my position as Director of Manufacturing to take care of work and school related responsibilities.
One of the proudest moments of the 2024 competition was during one of the 1v1 matches when we first unveiled our newest and most innovative strategy, dubbed the “Giraffe Strat” by much of the team. In a first for the competition, we created a raisable head for the robot which could peek over the walls, allowing our robot to shoot the other team’s robot while keeping its armor plates safely behind the wall. This strategy led us to an exciting second place victory in the 2024 competition, the highest the team has ever scored!
To see what the team is up to now, see here!
Cayla Kennedy 