Members Only

MDRC History

Since its inception as an informal club, in Spring Quarter 2002, MDRC has gone a long way in the promotion of engineering, software design, and use of technical skills in the fields of robotics at RIT.

Robotics at RIT

Robotics at RIT can be traced to mid 1980's. The early robotics projects at RIT involved automation of certain manufacturing processes by the MMET department. These projects are commonly referred to in the manufacturing sector as "work-cells" and were sent to competitions such as the SME/RI 'RTEC'.

During these annual competitions other projects were conceived like the "Robot Construction Competition" & "Sumo-Bot". SME hosted its annual 'Robotics Technology and Engineering Challenge from Robert Morris University, in Pittsburgh, PA in the mid 1990's. However, for the last two annual competitions, SME decided to host the competition at RIT; due to consistent impressive performance of the 'Work-Cell' and other challenges by the RIT students. The SME student chapter at RIT (#18) was the only club promoting the design and construction of robots, by RIT students, during the late 1980's and 1990's.

Unfortunately the national SME organization decided the annual 'Robotic Technology and Engineering Challenge" was no longer feasible; therefore they could no longer be hosted. In May of 2003 the last SME/RI 'Robotic Technology and Engineering Challenge' was hosted at the RIT campus, in Rochester NY. That year the RIT 'Robotics Challenge' entry was HARDCORE I, which took the overall silver award. The group of students which had been working on the 'Robot Construction' and 'Sumo-Bot' portions of the challenge for the past few years were left without a major challenge to compete in. In September of 2003, with the SME/RI competition indefinitely cancelled, and the SME student chapter #18 making a shift to focus on manufacturing; RIT students who had not been involved with the 'Work-Cell' aspect of the challenge were asked to distance themselves from the SME student chapter. Thus, as a matter of occurrence, former members of the SME student chapter made a transition to MDRC, where they were encouraged to continue the goal of promoting robotics at RIT.

MDRC Background by year

Spring 2002

MDRC was started as an agreement between the EE department and a senior design team working on the 'BANE' Battle-Bot. Since the EE department funded a significant portion of the project, it was understood that the robot must remain at RIT following the graduation of the seniors working on the project. Mechanical design work was done in CAD by RIT students, with the complicated machining & welding donated by the Gleason Corporation. Mechanically the robot was finished by May 2002; however the electrical systems were never quite finished. As such the robot was never seen to work by the Senior Design team who labored on it.

Senior Design 2001-2002

archive copy of Team SMRT - Heavyweight BattleBot page.

Team Members

Team Leader & Mechanical Design: Rich Witt (A.K.A. Rivot)
Electrical Engineer: Justin Bracken (A.K.A. Synge)
Mechanical Engineer: Geoff Dickinson (A.K.A. Wild Man)
Assistant Electrical Engineer: Mark McPherson (A.K.A. Makeius)

2002 onward

You can also take a look at previous papers for the SME rovers.