Best finals project ever? Stanford students in the 'Introduction to Mechatronics' course build robots to do battle, sumo wrestler-style, to display their mastery of combining mechanical, electrical and computer engineering skills.

This year's competition, dubbed the 'Fiscal Cliff Face-Off', in which student-built robots, each representing a different political party, squared off on a picnic-table size platform and tried to push each other over the edge, otherwise known as the Fiscal Cliff, drew a large and enthusiastic crowd.