Student engineers from two colleges or universities square off to build radio-controlled robots that are capable performing a specific task. Each team -- assisted by a single robotics expert -- has a single day to build a robot from scratch materials. At the end of the day the two robots battle it out in a timed match.
Teams from the University at Buffalo and the University of Pittsburgh are asked to design and build a robot that can (1) hang from a steel cable (2) traverse the span of cable, and (3) extinguish as many fires as possible. Buffalo wins the Surprise Household Item bonus with the slick and sophisticated "Water Buffalo," but the last embers of hope for a Robot Rivals championship go up in smoke when Pittsburgh’s lumbering "Hoser" puts out every fire in the competition. It wasn’t pretty, but it doesn’t have to be. Pittsburgh advances to the next round of competition and one step closer to the J. F. Engelberger Trophy.
