Tri-State University mechanical engineering students tested the skills of their semester projects, mine-sweeping and barrier-sensing robots, in time trials Wednesday in Fawick Hall.

Students in Professor Scott Kiefer’s introduction to mechatronics class used the bodies of returned toy forklifts to create robots programmed with infrared sensors to avoid barriers or find objects.

Robots programmed to avoid barriers worked their ways expertly through a maze to arrive at a destination without colliding with the walls. In an adjacent room, students with mine-sweeping robots engaged in four timed trials to see how quickly their creations could sense five blocks—“mines”—pick them up, and carry them to the edge of the training surface, placing them in a boundary area painted black.

Students earned penalties if their robots touched any mines or pushed them around the table or into the boundary area instead of picking them up. In early timed trials, Chris Rethmel’s robot completed the tasks most quickly, first in 1 minute, 53 seconds and then 2 minutes, 4 seconds. Fellow ME student Chris Rife turned in trials of 2 minutes, 16 seconds and 2 minutes, 30 seconds, while Grant Gastineau’s robot completed the task in 2 minutes, 33 seconds and 3 minutes, 12 seconds.

Professor Kiefer called this the department’s only real electronics application course, and expressed satisfaction in his students’ accomplishments. “The mine sweep guys followed through every requirement I gave them,” he said. “The projects are satisfying, because when the students enter this course, they haven’t done anything. Then they spend 10 weeks doing simple one-week projects, and then they work on these robots for 5 weeks. They actually get to apply what they’ve learned. This course is not in most ME programs. It’s more than a standard ME degree would have.”

His seven seniors are headed in two directions—either to graduate school or to jobs they already have lined up, he said.