Sponsored by SAE, the Society of Automotive Engineers, the Walking Machine Challenge is an annual, international competition where students from many universities put their walking machines through a grueling, three-day test of engineering prowess. Unlike other SAE organizations, the Robot Team is an integration of mechanical and electrical engineering aspects, as well as computer science. This unique environment provides a great real world experience for its members, allowing them to learn to work with and design around another group's designs and ideas.

The Stony Brook Robot Design Team has worked for the past two academic years on an innovative "two-in-one" robot design made up of a frame walker on top, for flexibility to maneuver over many different terrains, and an eight-legged walker on the bottom, built for speed. Their robot, Bender, finished in third place overall in the 2001 Walking Robot Decathlon. Bender won three of the most difficult events and placed second in another. This made the Stony Brook Robot Design Team the highest placing American team in the competition that year.

Bender's main failing is its lack of a high-level intelligent controller. The teams that placed first and second in the 2001 Decathlon had this kind of high-level controller. Our goal this year is to focus on developing an intelligent controller for Bender that builds on its existing innovative design, improves on the performance of recent winning Decathlon robots, and incorporates unique new kinds of information and feedback. We will integrate this controller into Bender, so that it acts as the "glue" between Bender's various sensor and motion systems. By leveraging our previous robot design, we will have enough time to allocate to enhancing the artificial intelligence of Bender. We will demonstrate Bender at Stony Brook University and evaluate it by taking to the 2003 SAE Walking Machine Challenge. Our goal is for a new and improved Bender II all the way to the top of the Walking Machine Challenge list.