RIP Sherman: Winner of the 2008 Edinburgh University
Intelligent Autonomous Robotics postgrad competition

Sherman: The little robot who could

This page is to commemorate our little robot buddy Sherman who, despite shooting to fame as the winner of the 2008 postgrad robot competition at Edinburgh, was consigned to the scrapheap of history after failing to retain his title against the undergrad challenger. Fame is indeed a fickle friend. Sherman, your light was too bright for this world. I hope the robot afterlife is treating you well.

The challenge

Each robot had 4 minutes to collect as many balls as possible and deposit them in the black drop-off zones under the lamps. The three robots who performed best in the solo round went through to a series of three head to head playoffs to determine the overall winner. The competition arena is shown on the right.

The results

As I recall 100 points were awarded for every ball picked up and successfully deposited in one of the drop-off zones, with partial points awarded for balls picked up and not deposited. I think some points were also awarded if the robot failed to pick up many balls but managed to successfully navigate and avoid collisions.

Qualifier results (solo)

Sherman convincingly topped the qualifying table and went into a head to head play-off against Kioea and !Marvin, the other two robots in the top three.

Playoff results (head to head)

In the head to head playoffs Sherman beat Kioea (440 to 160) and !Marvin (600 to 190) to come out the clear winner of the 2008 postgrad competition.

The epilogue

In the interests of full disclosure I should point out that, while Sherman kicked robot posterior in the postgrad competition, he didn't fare so well when pitched against the winner of the undergrad competition (I don't have a record of the exact points, but from the video I make it something like 140 to Sherman vs 400 to the undergrads).

While the undergrads had the benefit of having seen the postgrad bots in action before building theirs (resulting in a faster, lighter robot), the simple fact was that Sherman just didn't bring his game on the day. He wandered around half-heartedly picking up balls before driving to the drop-zone and pointedly refusing to deposit them. We are sure that this fit of pique was in retaliation for us reneging on our promise take him out on the town to celebrate with us if we won the postgrad competition. Instead, when we heard there would be a grand final against the winner of the undergrad competition, we got worried about him injuring himself during the celebrations. I'm ashamed to say we locked him in his drawer for six weeks without so much as a celebratory jelly baby and didn't even drop by to visit him until the big day.

Sherman joined his former foes in robot Valhalla shortly after the grand final and we hope he found it in his lego heart to forgive us for this shameful act of robot abuse before he was disassembled.