RIOT Robotics Wins Design Award at STORM Competition

RIOT Robotics, a robotics club from the U of A, earned the Design Award at the 2026 STORM robotics competition, held April 11 in Oklahoma. 

STORM, the Student Tele-Operated Robotics Mission, is an annual intercollegiate robotics competition hosted by the University of Oklahoma that challenges teams to build robots capable of completing real-world engineering tasks from a remote location. Using only a Wi-Fi connection and sensor feedback, student operators guide their robots through complex scenarios; this year's contest, Power Flash, required teams to restore power infrastructure and climb to safety before simulated floodwaters arrived. 

RIOT's robot stood out for several design choices, including a 270-degree curved rack and pinion system, a custom code library and a vacuum-powered claw. Judges highlighted the team's "numerous novel solutions" when presenting the award. 

The team included John Cedric Serio, a freshman computer engineering major who served as the electrical and programming lead; Gavin Hill, a junior mechanical engineering major who served as the mechanical lead; and Josef Frankhouse, a mechanical engineering alumnus who served as the industry mentor. 

Hill said the robot was built on a four-motor X-drive base, which allowed it to move in multiple directions without needing to turn. The team also designed a curved rack and pinion system that allowed the robot's scoring mechanisms to move around the outside of the robot and operate from the most useful position during a match. 

"Our mechanical design was unique because we offered fresh solutions that differed from typical mechanical design metrics seen at the competition," Hill said. 

The remote-operation challenge played a major role in the team's design. Because students could only operate the robot through camera views, the team focused on making the robot easier to drive and control. 

"It is deceptively challenging to drive strictly through cameras in the first place without being able to see the entire position of the robot," Hill said. 

Serio developed a custom robotics library called "Automat" to support the robot's controls, cameras and communication systems. He said much of the code was built so it could be reused in future robotics projects. 

"Eighty to ninety percent of our codebase is generalized to a point where it could be used on almost any robotics project, mostly through the Automat library," Serio said. 

Frankhouse said the project required collaboration across several parts of the robot's design. He worked on the movement system while Serio led coding efforts, and Hill worked on the mechanical base and drive system. 

"In the end, we came up with an innovative product due to each member concentrating their time into specific roles," Frankhouse said. 

The project also gave students hands-on experience with computer-aided design, mechanical assembly, programming, wireless communication and design under competition constraints. 

Hill said winning the Design Award as a first-year team reflected the work the group put into the robot throughout the academic year. 

"Winning the design award as a first-year team in the competition shows our ability to apply creative and efficient solutions to entirely new challenges," Hill said. "It also exhibits the large amount of time and thought we poured into developing this robot throughout the academic year." 

Serio said the award recognized the team's effort and the foundation it created for future projects. 

"The award is to me an expression of that respect and the incredible effort we put into the robot and a reminder that, even though this one demo went poorly, we still built an excellent robot and have laid the groundwork for future amazing robots," Serio said.