Notre Dame’s Robotic Football team emerged triumphant from the 2023 Fall Combine Competition, placing first overall and winning best quarterback, center and kicker. Their performance makes them top seed for the Robotic Football Tournament in April.
The combine, held this year at Notre Dame’s Stepan Center on November 11, included Valparaiso University, Trine University, Calvin University and Ohio Northern University, with the United States Naval Academy participating virtually.
Robotic football is played by remotely driven position-specific robots that can pass, tackle, kick, catch and carry. The combine is patterned after the NFL pre-draft event at which players demonstrate through a series of drills their speed, agility, strength and passing accuracy.
“Instead of recruiting players, we quite literally have to build our team,” said team member Zach Mikhail, a Notre Dame junior majoring in mechanical engineering.
Building a robotic quarterback that can excel in the combine is an engineering challenge. To get full score, the center has to snap the ball to the quarterback, who then fires it to the receiver.
“We had an outstanding performance from our quarterback and driver, Derek Pepple,” said junior and head coach Jake Buettner. “Our center and its driver Grace Beauchamp, along with our wide receiver and driver Tim Parisi, set a new accuracy record.”
Replacing plastic parts with aluminum was an improvement on this year’s bot fabrication. “That change made them more resilient and easier for the pit crew to fix quickly,” said senior and team president Maria Schudt.
The team’s faculty advisor, Craig Goehler, associate teaching professor in aerospace and mechanical engineering, credited team culture for this year’s success. “Coding, designing, manufacturing, pit crew, electronics — all those team functions have been un-siloed, and that has resulted in some truly beautiful interdisciplinary group work.”
Several of the combine’s announcers and referees were club alumni and long-standing fans of the sport, which originated at Notre Dame in 2011.
“Almost everything I did in the club is what I do in my job now every day,” said Alexa Buch ’18, combine referee and hardware technical program manager at Amazon Robotics. “Engineering is a team sport, and being in a club like Robotic Football is exactly the way to practice that.”
— Karla Cruise, Notre Dame College of Engineering; photos by Wes Evard and Todd Taylor, Notre Dame College of Engineering