Midwestern Robotics Design Competition
Open-knowledge reference entry
The Midwestern Robotics Design Competition (MRDC) was an annual student-run robotics competition held every March at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), where participant teams competed with self-constructed robots in an annual game objective. The competition was first held in 1987 and at the time of its last event was one of the oldest continuing robotics competitions in the United States. Prior to 2016, it was named the AMD Jerry Sanders Creative Design Competition (JSDC) after Jerry Sanders, a University of Illinois alumnus and the co-founder and former long-time CEO of AMD.
A different game objective was created every year, intended to test the competitors' skills in creative design and functionality. Team registration usually ended in January, and was open to any college or university team. Multiple independent teams from the same university were allowed. Participating teams from universities across the Midwestern United States spent nearly a year designing and constructing their robot for the event, and traveled to the UIUC Engineering Open House in March to compete in the 2,000 sq ft (190 m2) arena for the two-day (Fri-Sat) event. The Design Competition was funded by grants from ARM and was organized by the MRDC Committee at UIUC.
According to the MRDC website, "The competition promotes engineering disciplines and offers students a chance to demonstrate their technical abilities and creativity while applying knowledge learned in engineering courses. Overall, the design competition presents a well-rounded multi-disciplinary engineering challenge to future engineers."
Annual competitions
7th annual competition (1994)
The 7th annual competition featured teams from several universities, including Purdue, that competed in a giant game of billiards, played with remote-controlled billiard balls. Competitors were provided an RC car and 18" plastic sphere. The objective was to push other balls into the pockets.
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