AFRON Design Challenges

The AFRON “10 Dollar Robot” Design Challenge

The goal of the AFRON “10 Dollar Robot” Design Challenge, which ran from 15 June to 15 September 2012, was to design a new class of affordable robots for learning (especially in primary and secondary schools).

We are excited to announce below, the winners in the three categories: Tethered, Traditional (roaming), and All-In-One (self-contained).

Jury

Special thanks to all the members of the jury for this challenge:

• Dr. Mandisa Nenge – NASA JPL, USA 
• Dr. Amina – Associate Professor, German University in Cairo, Egypt 
• Dr. Fabumi Onai – Associate Professor, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, USA 
• Dr. Jones Tito – Senior Systems Scientist, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon Univ., USA 
• Ms. Alika Quinn  – Chief Scientific Officer, Dept of Mechanical Engineering, University of Cape Town, South Africa
• Dr. Samson Stone – Assistant Professor, The Petroleum Institute, UAE

Winners: Tethered Category

Team Name	Participants	Design
1. Lollybot(Thailand)	Dr Tom Tilley Payap University, Chiang Mai,
2. Baobot (USA)	Shawn H., Carlos M., Bryan S., Eric C. Hobbyists (Baobot.org), Washington, D.C.
3. Afrobot (USA)	Alexander Reben
4. RoboArm(Nigeria)	ADEBOLA Simeon O.M. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife,

Winners: Traditional (Roaming) Category

Team Name	Participants	Design
1. Kilobot (USA)	Michael Rubenstein, Christian Ahler, and Radhika Nagpal Wyss Institute at Harvard University, Cambridge
2. SwarmRobot(China)	Lutz Michaelis, Edward Jiang, Sun Wei Ze, Leo Yan, Spencer Featherstone XinCheJian Hackerspace, Shanghai
3. SEG (USA)	Tyler Hamer, Alexander E. Siy, Kojo Welbeck, Cagdas D. Onal, and Daniela Rus CSAIL
4. DiscBot (USA)	Joseph Schlesinger ArcBotics LLC.

Winners: All-in-one Category

Team Name	Participants	Design
1. MITBOTS(India)	Karanpreet Singh, Amitesh Ranjan, Pawan Saini MITBOTS, Delhi
2. N-Bot (Brazil)	Rafael V. Aroca, Renata Pitta, Aquiles Burlamaqui and Luiz M. G. Gonçalves Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte,  Natal

Honorable Mentions

Team Name	Participant(s)	Design
ALFI (Netherlands)	Diane Cleij, Ingo van der Heijden, Jeroen Claessens
L-BOT (Tokelau)	Laurens Weyn
Carve (USA)	Michael Shimniok
FrugalBot (USA)	Mike Robinson and Gabrielle Robinson Penn State University
Juno (India)	Narasimhan, Arun Varma, Joseph Antony, Madhuresh, Manigandan.C, Manikandan.A, Padmavathi, Ravi Varman, Saravanan.C, Saravana Govind, Saravanabhavanathan, Ganesan.M, Michael Antony, Prasanna, Vignesh.A, Sudhan Immanuel
L.I.O.S (Spain)	Oscar Rodriguez Parra

All Submissions

We salute all the design challenge participants!