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The robot battle is on. The Markt – right in the city center – will be the spot where 15 health care robots are competing for the CCM mechatronics Trophy. Fifteen student teams from the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany built a care robot. At the end of the day the winner will be known.

The robots have to open a door, pass a threshold, and serve a drink. These orders were not chosen by accident by Sioux CCM, organizer of the contest. These seemingly small actions can have a really added value for a bedridden elderly.

Exactly this is the purpose of Sioux CCM. Together with the students, the Dutch company wants to contribute to the care of the future. This annual competition (the seventh edition is tomorrow) is one way of achieving this goal. The company will reimburse the cost of materials. Furthermore, the students need creativity and technical expertise to build the care robot. Quite logically the competition is in the midst of Dutch Technology Week.

Different disciplines

In addition to contributing to solving a social problem, the company wants to show how challenging technology really is. It tries to offer the students more experience in cooperation between various disciplines such as mechanical, electrical and software. Finally, the company wants the challenge to show the different phases of a project.

Program

From 16.00 the teams start preparing their robots on the spot. At 18.00 hours the competition will really start with the preliminaries. The finals will be at 20:00. Then the winner will be known.