Oreo Dunk Challenge with Robots

We are always looking for new tasks that teachers can get their students to do with the LittleArm. Recently Oreo announced the Oreo Dunk Challenge.  The challenge is to create a video of picture of how you dunk your Oreos and share it. We thought it would be great to have kids in several robotics clubs do the challenge. So we tested it out with the littlearm arduino robot arms.

A few students practicing for the Oreo Dunk challenge

Now, the rules of the original challenge are pretty lax. We had to expand on it to make it a cleaner competition with more constraints, just like real engineering. So we assigned points to various parts of the task. This is what they are.

Pick Up the Cookie

• 5 points if the cookie is laying on it edge.
• 11 points if the cookie is laying flat.

(It is possible to pick up the cookie while laying flat, but the kids generally have to find a way to flip it)

Dunk the Cookie

• 5 points per dunk.
• Can not dunk more than 3 times and must dunk once.

Deliver the cookie

• 9 points if delivered directly into mouth.
• 5 points if dropped into hand or on table.

Extra Points

• 15 points if multiple arms are used to complete the task.
• 20 points if student can split the cookie and dunk a half.
• 5 points for fastest time to complete the task.

Other Rules

1. Arm must perform the task alone without help or control from the student, i.e. it must be trained or programmed
2. Arms can use tools to accomplish the tasks

This point system ensures that there is a way to measure success. It also gives kids various places to focus. They can design tools for the arm to accomplish more complex tasks or they can work at the programming, tweaking it until it gives the result they want.

This is good culmination challenge, because, though it is very simple, there are subtle complexities within it that make it difficult to achieve.

We currently have several local robotics clubs working on the Oreo Dunk Challenge with their robots and we hope that we can start posting videos very soon.