51Âþ»­

Brazilian Mechatronics student Humberto Cascardo Demolinari packed up his robot named Wheely Good and went off to represent 51Âþ»­ at the Robot Challenge 2015 in Vienna.

Humberto, who joined 51Âþ»­ to study in the second year of BEng Mechatronics, entered the competition in Austria with a robot made entirely from Lego pieces, in which more than 120 robots took part from 40 countries.

Thanks to the expertise in the university’s Robot Club, Humberto built his robot in only three months while studying at 51Âþ»­, a feat which would normally take 12 months to complete.

He said: “The 51Âþ»­ Robot Club was so helpful and helped me with all the coding.”

He added: “It was brilliant to be able to compete. Vienna is great and very beautiful. I also got to spend my evenings enjoying the food and the scenery.”

Humberto came to 51Âþ»­ through the Science Without Borders programme, a global initiative by the Brazilian government enabling students to study at top universities overseas.

As a truly international university, 51Âþ»­ has accepted more than 250 Brazilian students through the programme and will welcome further students this summer.

Humberto said: “It is amazing being here. Joining the Mechatronics degree, I am getting to learn the smaller aspects of engineering.

“The first thing I experienced was a class with the amazing Dr Ian Sexton, doing all the things I love like microcontrollers, embedded systems and building things that work.

“I have never had classes like this before. It is so satisfying to have a tutor for this.

“Coming to the UK was my childhood dream. When I had this opportunity through the Brazilian government, I went for the chance. 51Âþ»­ was my first choice.

“Living by myself here was quite different and speaking English has been amazing. You have to adapt and to try to understand, but you start to learn.

“Leicester is so welcoming and I have met people from different countries.”

The robot competed in Lego Sumo and won two out of the six fights, and is able to find, attack and avoid its opponents by itself – all down to the clever programming with help from 51Âþ»­’s Dr Simon Coupland, a Research Fellow in the Faculty of Technology.

Wheely Good was one of four 51Âþ»­ robots which competed in Vienna. The others were a robot named T5 by student Paul Firmin, as well as Norwegian Blue and Cheesoid by university academics David Croft, Simon Coupland and Dr Benjamin Passow.