Robotics

Connor had his first robotics competition this last Saturday.

It was fun to watch but it lasted through the early afternoon.

It made for a long day.

The students build, program, and drive the robots.

These students have spent weeks building and practicing.

Since this was our first experience it was fascinating to watch everything.

In this photo they were inspecting a robot.

There were 13 schools represented.

Most schools had several teams with several robots.

Our school has four robots and two teams.

The teams were listening to the drivers meeting.

In the center of the background are some tables.

There were banks of tables on either side of the far end of the gym.

These were designated "pit tables".

Each school had a table to store and repair their robots.

Connor said they had to repair and or replace motors a few times.

Quite frequently parts would fall off or break off of the robots during a match.

This was the competition side of the gym with four competing fields.

At the far end of the gym were two more boards for practicing.

(The guy sitting and taking pictures is one of our teachers that leads our team.

He was like a kid with a big grin on his face most of the day.)

I will do my best to explain how a match works...

A match consists of two teams, each with one robot and two drivers. A match lasts 1 minute. Drivers are required to switch midway through the match. The orange and yellow things are called hubs. Points are scored several different ways and all points go to each team that is in the match... i.e. they co-op the points. There are two boxes, called building zones, in the corners at one end of the playing field. To score points with orange hubs they need to be inside a building zone. Once they are in the building zone, low ones (not stacked) are worth 1 point and high ones (stacked) are worth 2 points. The yellow hubs score a little differently. It's 1 point if it's removed from it's starting peg. A yellow hub scores 2 points if it is in the building zone at a low level (not stacked) and 4 if it's high (stacked). Before the minute is up the robots need to be hung. Scoring is based on the stages of hanging. If the robot is merely under the yellow bar, it is considered "parked" and worth 1 point. If it is hung, but low to the ground, it's worth 2 points. If, however, it is a high hanging robot, it is worth 4 points. A robot is considered high hanging if a hub can slide underneath cleanly.

This was a good illustration of two hanging robots.

You can also see the hubs in the building zones for points.

In one match a robot dropped off the bar just before the timer went off... so it didn't get the 4 points for hanging. We saw many robots that tipped over and some had parts break off.

Once in a while we saw a hub or two get flipped out of the playing field.

Some robots had coat hanger looking hooks that grabbed the yellow bar to pull themselves up with.

Others had long arms and folded themselves up around the yellow bar.

It was captivating and entertaining all at once.

One of the rules states that the students are to review the scoring with the scorekeeper after the match.

This was from one of the skills events.

They can either do a program challenge or show driving skills.

Connor and his teammate were doing a program challenge.

The robot is programmed to start from the starting box,

move forward, grab the yellow bar, and hang itself.

The kids set their robots down and hit the start button.

This one was programmed by Connor's driving buddy.

It successfully completed it's task and hung itself.

It's quite impressive to watch.

The driving skill is basically a solo match.

They had one minute to drive, score as much as possible, and hang.

Connor was second driver.

Passing the time between Connor's matches...

Connor's team made it as far as the finals.