This round was pretty epic. The other team had a sort of Project X type structure to prevent us from getting to the other side, but our Legobot is a beast and still made it up the hill enough to fight with their bot. It managed to push its way over a bit, moving the bridge blocker so that the angle of the hill was small enough that the Create would probably make it across. After some fighting, it stopped at the top because it thought it had finished its code. But their bots knocked the other half of the bridge down for us, and after the Create had done a wonderful job sorting Tribble piles, it also forced its way into the mess. Half of the bot was on their side, but the start switch didn’t make it. However, we still got the 15 points for Legobot and got an overall awesome score.
Archive for the ‘Competition!’ Category
Head-to-Head Round 3
Friday, July 11th, 2008Head-to-Head Round 2
Friday, July 11th, 2008This round went extremely well. We got all the Tribbles that we hoped for, plus deployed three of the four cups and all of the umbrellas. Legobot made it across the bridge, but once again bumped into their bot and ended up in their solarium. Their bot knocked over the other half of the bridge, though, but went a little bit crooked and was stuck on the edge of the bridge. We were worried about the Create getting across - it looked to be a nasty collision. But when it was time, the Create was, of course, awesome and a bulldozer, and it pushed their Legobot just enough out of the way that we made it all the way over and into their start box just before the timer ran out.
Head-to-Head Round 1 - Let’s go!
Friday, July 11th, 2008Our first round went quite well. The Create did excellent grabs, doing everything as well as usual. We had 13 good Tribbles, meaning we scored all of them from the bottoms of each pile. Legobot, however, ran into the difficulties we can expect (or not expect, as we never know) when it crossed the board. Their bot was right at the edge of the board, so from the beginning we ran into them and became misaligned. We ended up stuck in their solarium without having hit down the other half of the bridge, so the Create never made it across. Nevertheless, we got a nice score.
Ready and Waiting
Friday, July 11th, 2008This morning we didn’t have nearly as many problems getting out of bed since we got much closer to an average amount of sleep. We piled into the vans for yet another 7:30 am practice session (yes, i know, it’s getting old.) We then watched a collaborative presentation by a few of the groups who have come to Botball from overseas, which was very interesting. The following presentation was on the creation of educational but fun video games. Apparently, kids are more likely to study when studying means playing a computer game. Personally, I was shocked.
When it was time for lunch break, we headed to a cute sandwich place called Which Wich? It has a unique system for ordering sandwiches: you pick up a bag, color in the bubbles of the toppings you’d like, and they make it for you! Not only is the ordering process fun with coloring involved, the sandwiches are delicious.
We’ve just finished the second practice round of the day and the final practice round of Botball Nationals 2008! Now we’re just waiting to be called to the tables and begin the head-to-head round… wish us luck!
Visit the Botball site to view a steadily updated bracket!
Practice Rounds and a Lack of Sleep
Thursday, July 10th, 2008
Last night there were some issues regarding bedtime. While we had a 11 o’clock curfew by which we had to be inside a room and relatively quiet, there was no official time that we had to be sleeping. Granted, we wanted to get to practice rounds today as soon as they started at 7:30, meaning wake-up time was soon after 6. But after playing an epic game of mini golf, swinging on the best swingset ever that is located right next to our dorms, playing an intense card game of B.S., and eating lots of starbursts and sour patch kids, somehow sleep didn’t come easily. We dropped off gradually, with a kid going to bed every half hour once it was past 2:30, but there were still five of us who were up until 4:30.
When the alarm clock went off at 6:15, we had some difficulty waking up. Apparently, at 7:05 (when we were supposed to have left at 7), someone went in Liam’s room, told him the time, and he seemed to have been dreaming that we were still involved in the card game and yelled his disbelief at his awakener. Eventually, we all deliriously shuffled out of the dorms and into the cars.
We practiced our head-to-head code, and it ran pretty well. We then headed to the auditorium to listen to three presentations by scientific/engineering related speakers; I’m sure they were fascinating, but my brain definitely didn’t absorb much of it in its sleepwalking state. After the break for lunch, we listened to another speaker, and this one I was able to fully pay attention to since lunch had revived me nicely. His was more of a philosophical talk regarding the role of robots in society and in the media. He showed multiple movie clip examples of machinery and robots being controlling, dangerous, and in control of the society in which they belonged. It is a fairly common plot theme, because the thought of robots becoming powerful enough to be independent of humans is strange and slightly terrifying. So that talk gave us a lot to think about.
Next, we headed for practice round 2 of the day, which was just an hour long so we only got a few runs in. When the line closed, we still had some code edits we wanted to try, so we were planning on coming back to this third round, which goes from 7-9.
While the Beyond Botball head-to-head rounds were going on, we went on the most anticipated field trip of the week. We, along with our adopted team Notre Dame Academy, headed to the movie theater to see the very appropriately themed Wall-E. It was a great movie, and one of the cutest movies I’ve ever seen. Hannah and I said “aww” at least 50 times. The boys didn’t enjoy it quite as much, especially since most of them dozed off at least once during the show. But I loved it.
Now we are at practice round 3 and still not quite done perfecting our code. After a 6th place score in the seeding round, we’re hoping to do really, really well in head-to-head tomorrow. We’re just adjusting little things, nothing big, just hoping we do our absolute best in the morning.