Multidisciplinary Robotics Club Sets New Record, Brings Home First-Place at Harvard PacBot

RIT’s Multidisciplinary Robotics Club (MDRC) traveled to Harvard University on April 6th for the 3rd Annual PacBot Competition, returning home with a first-place win and a new high-score record of 1190 points. The competition, created by Harvard Robotics in 2017, challenges teams to create autonomous micromouse robots – robots that can fit in the palm of your hand – that then compete in a best of three games physical PAC-MAN arena complete with “berries” and menacing ghosts. This year’s competition was a face-off between RIT, Harvard University, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and Tufts University.


“This win helped showcase exactly what we are capable of achieving as a club. It helped boost morale and showed us that our efforts were worthwhile even though we knew we were going up against teams that had a lot more experience,” said Jeffrey Wengn ’23, head of the MDRC's PacBot team.


RIT’s winning robot utilized a Raspberry Pi Zero as the network connector, receiving information from the game’s server through the use of Robomodules, a python framework developed by Harvard Robotics.  Using structured serialized data on robot positions, ghost positions, and game state, the team then created an advantage for themselves by using an A* pathfinding algorithm that helped determine the robot’s next best position.


Generous support from The Raymond Corporation made it possible for the club to travel to and from the competition. 


Students representing RIT’s MDRC at the competition were: Prangon Das ’22 (Computer Engineering), Brian Herzog ’20 (Computer Engineering), Sidney Davis ’22 (Electrical Engineering), Andrew Yoder ’22 (Electrical Engineering), Jeffrey Weng ’23 (Computer Science), Andrew Serra ’23 (Computer Engineering Technology), and Dylan Lebedin '22 (Electrical Engineering).