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27 teams prepare for battle at NI robotics competition grand final

The Grand Final of the 4th annual National Instruments Autonomous
Robotics Competition will see 27 student teams from top universities across
Australia and New Zealand compete for top honours at Macquarie University, Sydney
on Thursday, 25 September.

The final task for the 2014 knockout competition, themed ‘Go, Sow,
Grow!’ has an agricultural focus. The task requires team robots to wirelessly
communicate within their environment, collect seeds, navigate to a farming
area littered with obstacles, deposit the collected seeds in designated
planting areas and navigate back to the home zone.

Matej Krajnc, Managing Director for National Instruments Oceania explains
the competition helps prepare students for the workplace by teaching them
valuable hands-on skills. Krajnc observes that the competition not only allows
students to demonstrate their engineering and mechatronics skills on an international
platform, but also teaches them how to complete a defined goal within time
limits.

Krajnc also commended the impressive success rate of teams making it
through the competition stages, with a diverse range of students from New
Zealand and all six Australian states entering the final round of the contest.

The winner of the NI Robotics Competition will receive a cash prize of
$3000, while the second and third place winners will collect $1,500 and $750
respectively. The best robot design will win a bonus prize of $500. All teams
that successfully complete the competition tasks get to keep the robot development
kit, featuring NI myRIO reconfigurable hardware and NI LabVIEW system design
software.

Universities competing in the grand
final

NSW: University of New South Wales, University of Technology Sydney,
University of Wollongong, University of Sydney, University of Western Sydney,
Macquarie University, University of Newcastle;

Queensland: Griffith University, Queensland University of
Technology, University of Queensland;

Victoria: La Trobe University, Monash University, Royal Melbourne
Institute of Technology (RMIT), Swinburne University of Technology, University
of Melbourne;

South Australia: Flinders University, University of South Australia;

Tasmania: Australian Maritime College

Western Australia: Curtin University, University of Western Australia

New Zealand: Manukau Institute of Technology, University of Auckland,
Victoria University of Wellington, Massey University

The National Instruments Autonomous Robotics Competition Grand Final is
being held on Thursday, 25 September from 9am – 3pm, with the final round of
the competition from 2.30pm in the Lotus Theatre, Building W6D.

Admission is free.

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