Medical Division

Over the years, humankind has suffered from many pandemics, epidemics, and breakouts of disease. Outbreak – adjusting to the threat focuses on these disastrous events and has challenged our team with opening our Medical Division. Teams are tasked with creating a robot capable of collecting blocks of wood which represent human cells. Once gathered, these cells are delivered to the cell testing device which has the capability of determining which ones are healthy, infected, or immune. Healthy cells are immunized with a vaccine and separated onto isolation platforms, while infected cells are completed isolated from all the other cells. Immune cells do not need any further attention.

Our newest model, Reaper, was carefully designed by our team of engineers to be the most beneficial tool to fight pandemic-like threats. Capable of gathering multiple cells at one time, Reaper is equipped with a bumper and two tilt buckets to allow for their safe transportation to and from the sorting station. The bumper moves as many as 12 cells while the tilt buckets carry a total of six plus a super vaccine. A servo motor raises the latch to release the bucket which snaps back in place one all cells are off-loaded. A variation on a four-bar design maintains a constant angle on the titling buckets.

The three-wheel design offers smooth maneuverability between the sorting station and isolation platforms, ensuring swift vaccination of all non-infected cells.

In order to collect cells both above and below isolation platforms, Reaper comes equipped with his very own 8 inch wide scythe which extends his reach by 17 inches to efficiently hook several cells at one time. When not in use, the scythe it retracts under the base of the unit.

With a total weight of 17 pounds, Reaper moves rapidly at 2.5 feet per second.

Reaper’s standard equipment includes a vaccine feeding tube conveniently located between the two shelves. While at the sorting station, all three vaccines may easily be fed into the tube. With a simple movement of the dispensing rods, the vaccines are efficiently administered to all the cells as soon as they are placed on the platforms.

While preparing for this year’s Outbreak challenge, our Creative and Marketing divisions were fortunate to interview a professor at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama to learn more about the ever-changing role of robotics in the medical field.