Robotech: Pipe Builder
January 2026 (36 hours)
As a weekend project, I and a 3 friends decided to participate in a 36 hour long robotics hackathon, where we were challenged to design a robot that could help humans when they settle on other planets.
I thought of the idea of a pipe building robot, that can crawl along tubes, pick up new segments with an arm, add them to an existing pipe, and then continue crawling along new segments of the pipe to repeat the process.
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This project was done completely from scratch. No existing cad models were used and no initial design concept was formed prior to the beginning of the hackathon. All parts were designed, printed, assembled, and controlled within the time frame. (Now guess how much sleep we got!)
Results
We took home 2nd place in the teleoperated section of the competition. Our voltage regulator unfortunately broke so we were not able to demonstrate the robot moving up and down the pipe with DC motors. If I were to continue with this project, I would fix this feature, add the ability to go around curved pipes, and add some feature that can secure the pipes segments together.
Skills Developed
Rapid Iteration: How to cautiously design things to work the first time, and how to quickly iterate on them.
Team Communication: Effectively communicating with team members under fatigue and time constraints.
Resourcefulness: Making things work with the parts provided, and finding ways around their flaws.