In the School of Engineering's Autonomous Systems course, engineering students challenged their technical skills through designing fully autonomous robots. As part of the course's final project, students applied their learning in coding, sensor integration and mechanical design to create robots that could detect, attack and outmaneuver opponents' sumobots. The project culminated in a high-energy competition during the 2025 Stander Symposium, showcasing the students' innovation and the power of experiential learning at UD.
The concept of sumobots has a long-standing history and includes a variety of established competitions across the U.S. In UD's course, students design a custom version that falls between the "mini" and "mega" categories, featuring fully autonomous operation with no remote control. The bots are required to independently sense, decide and act in real time.
During the first two months of the course, students built foundational skills in iterative design by working with microcontrollers, logic chips, motors, sensors and wheel selection using a standard robot chassis. Through a series of assignments, students explored which hardware and coding strategies are most effective for the competition. During the final month of the course, students entered a focused design phase, adding custom mechanical elements and integrating their mechatronic systems to create their own sumobots. Final designs were fabricated in UD's Makerspace using 3D printing and laser cutting.
"The best way to learn is through open-ended design that teaches students to take the objectives of the assignments and turn them into measurable design requirements," said professor Timothy Reissman, the course's instructor.
Sumobots took the stage for their "tournament-style" competition at the annual University of Dayton Stander Symposium, an annual event that showcases student research, design work and academic accomplishments across the university. Students advanced through a tournament-style bracket, competing for the top position and demonstrating the performance of their autonomous designs.
"Students in this course learned so much about the engineering design process that it would have been a shame not to share it with others," Reissman said. "Not to mention that many people at UD are fans of March Madness, so why not harness that excitement for something with an academic spirit!"
In course evaluations, one student praised the group-oriented approach to the project: "It shifted the emphasis from individual performance to team-based success, which better mirrors real-world engineering scenarios," one student wrote. "The fact that both team members had to contribute meaningfully to do well helped foster collaboration and ensured that we learned from each other."
Top image: Engineering students hold their sumobot creations between rounds of the sumobot competition at UD's 2025 Stander Symposium.
Middle image: Engineering students set their sumobots on a small black circle platform on the floor in preparation for the next round of competition.
Bottom image: Engineering students tinker with their sumobots in between rounds of competition.