Robot-Building Lab and Contest at the 1993 National AI Conference

robot-building lab. The lab was in a roped-off area of the main exhibition area. When the exhibition area was open to general conference attendees, they could come up to the rope and talk to the teams. Some people preregistered as teams (both winning teams did). Others, such as me, were assigned to teams. My teammates were Karl Altenburg from North Dakota State University ■ A robot-building lab and contest was held at the Eleventh National Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Teams of three worked day and night for 72 hours to build tabletop autonomous robots of legos, a small microcontroller board, and sensors. The robots then competed head to head in two events. I was one of the developers of JACK, the second-place finisher in the Coffeepot event. This article contains my personal recollections of the lab and contest.