People may be anxiously waiting for the closing ceremony of the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games today, but a day before Massey University's Palmerston North campus was excited for the annual Robot Olympics.

A total of 16 teams of first-year engineering students working in threes and fours placed their robots through a hexathlon in order to check their speed, adaptability, and power.

Each team was supplied with a gearbox, a motor, and basic electronic circuitry to design, build, de-bug, and test the robots.

In this year’s competition, engineers mostly made four-wheeled boxes, whereas caterpillar tracks and a Lego spaceman driver was added by one team.

The robots were made in such a way that they could use light sensors to show difference between black and white.

Speed trial was the last event and the robot that would travel the whole course with fastest speed would be the winner.

Mat Flemmer, Max Betteridge, Charlotte Frith, and Bevan Chu were the winners.

Joshua Pirihi and James Anderson made a robot and named it Wilma. Mr. Pirihi said, “We were looking good at the start but obviously there are some headaches, we had to make some last minute repairs”.

Gourab Sengupta, who is a senior lecturer in School of Engineering and Advanced Technology, said the student applied their mechanical, electrical, and electronic engineering skills for making and testing the robots.