November 19, 2025
By Tracie Troha

Seventy teams of mechanical engineering students faced off Nov. 14 during the Fall 2025 ME 2110 Design Competition, the culminating event of the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering’s second-year design and build course. ME 2110: Creative Decisions and Design Review teaches students the fundamental techniques for creating, analyzing, synthesizing and implementing design solutions, combining analytical engineering skills with hands-on creativity.

The theme for this semester’s event, “How to Train Your Dragon,” was inspired by the live-action version of the film released this summer. Several students embraced the theme by wearing Toothless costumes, the main dragon character in the movie franchise.

The competition began with design presentations in the Love Building, followed by the robotics showdown at the GTMI Building. Teams competed head-to-head in a multi-round tournament during which their robots had to complete a series of tasks and maneuvers that included collecting sheep, fish and eels from a Viking village.

By the end of the night, the team Tuffnuts soared to victory and took home both the first-place trophy and the Design Award. Team members Ethan Yusen Hu, Aaditya Patel, Carson Greer Ray and James White credited persistence for their success.

“It’s exciting because it’s nice when your hard work pays off,” Hu said. “We spent a lot of time in the lab every week, even on Sundays.”

Ray added that seeing the robot evolve was especially rewarding.

 “We started off with just a piece of plywood with some wheels on it, and now we won the final competition,” he said.

An exciting comeback moment of the competition was the third-place finish for Mechknapper, a team that started out with a robot that didn’t move during the first round.

“We had issues throughout the night, but we made some minor adjustments and, in the end, everything just worked,” said Mechknapper team member Kazuha Nishihara.

Along with their trophies, the winning teams received gas cards and Milwaukee-brand tools.