The concept seemed simple — build a robot out of Legos and a microchip that could move and then fling ping-pong balls into a widegoal. But as the non-engineering majors in associate engineering Prof. Stephen Weis’ freshman design class learned, goals are much easier to miss in the real world.

“On paper, every one of these bots should get the job done,” Weis said of the nine students projects completed. “But the students discovered that the hardest thing to do is build something that can repeat the same task over and over. There’s just so many variables.”

Pictured: Psychology freshman Robert Mood and his team turned in the most successful robot.