Sunday, March 6, 2011

Robotics Competition

My 3 high school aged children participated in the Travers City FIRST Robotics competition this weekend. I wasn't able to watch this competition for a number of reasons, but was able to watch the entire competition using Webstreaming. One of the competitors (Code Red) hosted the webstreaming.

The team did very well at this competition. The game this year was to have robots place various ring shapes on some pegs that were at different heights. At the beginning of the match, there are 15 or 30 seconds (I don't remember which) when the robots do the task using no assistance from human players or drivers. Then two drivers from each team can direct the robot using joy sticks. A human player also returns rings that fall outside of the playing field. During the final 10 seconds of the match, the robots deploy minibots that race to the top of a pole. The first minibot that reaches the top gets 30 points.

Our team had the first working minibot at the event! Our team consistently reached the top of the pole first throughout all matches, except the final match of the day. We won all our matches during the ranking matches. On Saturday, our team was seated 2nd in choosing teams for the alliance for the finals.

Our team won the first final match. The winning alliance needs 2 out of three wins. During the second final match, the opposing alliance continued to ram our robot, eventually breaking our minibot deployment system. Our alliance lost the final two matches, so we ended up ranked second.

Even though I dislike the damage done to the robot, it is part of the game. The team was super excited after this competition and is eagerly awaiting the next one.

My kids got home at 1:30 am. They slept late and then napped this afternoon. It was a huge weekend for them. My wonderful husband drove 40 minutes each way to pick them up. We had all got up at 6:30 that morning, so he had a very long day.

No comments: