Purdue SIGBots winner of the world championship for building robots, relationships

In the diverse world of clubs at Purdue University, Purdue SIGBots stands out not only for its technical achievements, but for its strong sense of community and hands-on approach to learning—and now the club has a world robotics championship under its belt.

SIGBots, one of the special interest groups of the Purdue Society for Computing Machinery, is a student organization tasked with building robots for the VEX World Robotics Championship, the world's largest robotics competition.

Max Johnson, who is entering his senior year at Purdue and is studying multidisciplinary engineering, said he did competitive robotics in high school and wanted to join a club where he could continue to improve those skills.

“The difference with SIGBots, though, is that our bots are a little bit simpler, a little bit on a smaller scale, which puts some people off,” Johnson said. “The thing I like is that you can do whatever you want inside the club. You can get your hands dirty – whether it's things directly related to your degree or (something) completely different – ​​because you want to learn new skills.”

Fellow member Sean MacDonald, a senior in mechanical engineering, said the camaraderie is what drew him to the organization.

“Coming to Purdue, I saw a lot of different clubs. With SIGBots I found a really good group of friends and community to be a part of,” he said. “It was an extracurricular program that helped me work on my mechanical engineering skills and also (gave me) a group of friends that I could enjoy spending time with outside of the classroom.”

A major way the club is helping the robotics community grow is by providing resources like PROS Robotics Operating Systemone of the university's largest open source programming projects, and Purdue SIGBots Wikia comprehensive guide serving approximately 40,000 unique users each month.

“A lot of people struggle to find resources for the basics of engineering,” Johnson said. “You can find a million articles talking about torque, but very few that aren't NASA research papers on how to apply torque when designing other mechanisms. This wiki is designed to help students at all entry levels learn how to apply the skills and is geared toward the VEX Robotics competition.”

The competition is an international competition that pits student-built robots in head-to-head matches. In April, SIGBots became world champions when the team took home the top prize in the university division of the competition.

SIGBots faculty advisor Gustavo Rodriguez-Rivera, associate professor of practice in the Department of Computer Science, was especially proud to see the team secure a win on the VEX Robotics stage.

“Robotics and artificial intelligence are at the forefront of technology. Many high school students have been inspired by the Purdue ACM SIGBots, their VEX Robotics team, and the impactful mentoring it provides to high schools across the country,” said Rodriguez-Rivera. “This first place award will attract more motivated students to our academic programs and will help our ranking.”

MacDonald added, “It's a big deal for us because this is the pinnacle of the VEX robot competition. My freshman and sophomore year, we didn't get to win the world title for different reasons, and I'd say once we finally did, it was like the big win that asked a lot of our team.”

Beyond their competition, SIGBots members also actively foster the next generation of robotics enthusiasts by hosting competitions on Purdue's campus for middle and high school students.

“We've had a great time making the best races we can for students in the area and we've had a lot of great feedback from that,” Johnson said. “We also host a university competition for the VEX U program every year.”

Learn more about Purdue SIGBots here.