Graham Jaehnig/Daily Mining Gazette Michigan Tech’s Copper Country Robotics Team kicked off its Robot in 3 Days challenge on Saturday. The robot was completed by Tuesday morning. Its task is to pick up foam balls and shoot them into a bin.

HOUGHTON – Michigan Technological University’s Copper Country Robotics Team (CCRT) completed its robot by noon Tuesday, finishing a 72-hour challenge to build a functional robot.

The challenge, Robot in 3 Days (Ri3D), started at Noon on Saturday, with participants watching a kickoff video in the Alley Makerspace. The Alley Makerspace is a collaborative facility in the Memorial Union Building open to all students that’s outfitted with tools and equipment for 3D printing, woodworking, electronics and more.

David Reeves, MTU Computer Science major, said the robot’s task is to pick up 6-inch yellow foam balls from the floor using a roller slider on the front of the unit. After it picks up the balls, the balls roll down a hopper, across the inside of the robot, before feeding the balls into a flywheel shooter that will then shoot the balls in the opposite direction, into a hub.

Overall, said Reeves, the project went well, but some details have yet to be resolved before the Noon deadline.

“We got a couple of things I think we’re going to have to push off, such as we have bumpers that we still have to create, just due to a lack of hardware Monday night,” he said. “Then, some LED issues, which without time for the robot, we’re not really able to solve.”

On Saturday, Michigan Technological University’s Copper Country Robotics Team (CCRT) began a three-day effort to build an operational robot for a challenge.

David Reeves, MTU Computer Science major, said the team has 72 hours to build an operational robot.

The next step of the project is to present the robot to community.

“After Tuesday night, we will post the reveal video,” Reeves said, “then we’ll start answering questions from the community, if they have any on our design.”

The robot video can be seen at https://ccr.students.mtu.edu/

Reeves said the CCRT will then begin presenting the robot in competitions.

“We have one tentatively scheduled at Grand Valley State University in mid-February,” he said. “Different colleges do a little friendly competition against each other.”

Reeves said the Challenge is not competitive with any other school, but are opportunities for different teams to collaborate.

“We bump ideas off of other teams. We watch other teams throughout this process,” he said.