Today we’ve returned to the good ol’ Botcave. On top of that, we’ve returned to work on programming. I can hardly contain my enthusiasm. One of the things the kids were asked to do today was to program the robots to move in a square formation, hence the title of my blog. I’m clever, I know. A few of the first tries at this challenge yielded some creative interpretations of the concept of “square”. There were some rectangular squares, some straight squares, and even some round squares. Eventually the square was conquered by our talented youths, and they moved onto bigger and better things.

Namely, they moved onto programming the robot through an obstacle course of sorts. I will do my best to explain to you the course the robots were asked to take, but it might be ambiguous and confusing. It will make more sense if you’ve seen the gameboard. If you would like to see the gameboard, you’re welcome to take a look at my previous blog. (You could even read it if you want.) Anyways, back to the obstacle course. The robots are supposed to begin in the start box, push through the downspouts into enemy territory, go back through the downspouts into friendly grounds, and park the robot between two blocks set up by Mr. Gras. This description makes perfect sense to me, I hope it made some sense to you. Basically what I wanted to get it is that the kids are doing a little bit of complex programming. Complex to me, at least.

Here I am, waiting for one of the robots to experience a miserable failure so I can relay it to you in the wittiest fashion possible, but it seems that everyone is being successful. How incredibly boring. Only kidding of course, success is the best!

The only major failure of the day.

This year’s board (which I will insert a picture of) is supposed to be a coral reef. I’ve probably never seen something look less like a coral reef, but who am I to judge. The board has many exciting new features, including but not limited to: rotating downspouts in the middle of the fence-looking contraption. It’ll make more sense (sort of) after you take a good look at the board.

Hello Gameboard 2012!

Regrettably, I had to come late today, but I was told I missed a riveting game of “Robo Rally”. I came too late to catch the explanation, but according to the box next to me, it’s “A frenzied race filled with COMPUTER. DRIVEN. CHAOS.” So it’s pretty exciting.

After Mr. Gras passed out the paper with the gameboard and scoring method, we were instructed to start thinking about a strategy, then the part-sorting frenzy began. There are children everywhere on their hands and knees searching through a plethora of lego parts. Occasionally they pick up a part, hoping it’s the one they’ve been looking for. Many times, their faces droop as they return a misidentified piece to the colorful abyss from which it came. I took a quick blog-break to try my hand at sorting. I sat next to Brian as he searched for an elusive gray lego, stretched my arm out into the pile, and began to search. Apparently picking up handfuls of random legos and giving them to Brian wasn’t helpful. He sarcastically remarked, “This must be why you’re on outreach. You’re just so good at reaching… out.” Your pun is not appreciated, Brian.

Senior Brian Edmonds cries in agony, unable to locate his piece.

Scorned and dismayed, I have returned to my post on the couch in order to relay this valiant story of trial and error to you all.

Just as I promised in last week’s blog, I have the results of the bridge competition. Team Ryan-Mikey-Kelly won. However, let the records that Kelly did nothing to aid in this victory. Her most helpful contributions were the times she got up to get food so that she wasn’t annoying Mikey and Ryan as they worked. I think it was those fleeting moments of her absence that carried the team to glory, but I suppose that’s just my professional opinion. I have a little time left, so I guess I should go attempt to be useful in the part sorting process. Hopefully this time it will be more fruitful than my first endeavor.

There are so many kids in the ABC (alternate BotCave) today! Sticking with tradition, the first few times we meet, everyone participates in building and programming games to get everyone ready for the season ahead. We have so many new members this year I can hardly even keep track! I hope everyone enjoys themselves and keeps coming back.

Returning to the subject of today’s blog– the games. Today the challenge is to build a bridge between two boxes. The bridge has to support a plastic container, which in turn has to hold up to twenty rolls of pennies. The way you win is as follows: you build the bridge, you put as many weights as possible in your bridge, and then the weight of your pennies is divided by the weight of the bridge. Whoever gets the highest number as a result of that equation wins. The prize, as always, is worthless bonus points. Invaluable, I know.

The winning bridge demonstrates its strength.

I wish it was a bridge decorating contest, because if so, I would win. I’m sure of it. Unfortunately, I have to leave early today, so the results of the competition won’t be up here until next week. Hold your breath, I can only imagine how thrilling the games will be. They get pretty cut-throat. Hopefully Albert will add some pictures to this blog for me (Albert, if you’re reading this, hint hint). Next week I think we’re moving on to programming games. How exciting!

Apparently catapults were built after I left. Everyone loves a good catapult.

Joe, Albert, and I have decided to spend a portion of our day, or all of our day in Albert’s case, at the BotCave. This is going to be a fairly short post seeing as we’re shorthanded and we haven’t been here very long.

Albert and Joe have gotten “PerfectBot” to actually run the way it’s supposed to, imagine that. Albert discovered that there in fact is a real life use for precalc and she got a haircut! That’s really all that’s happened today, but I thought I’d keep you guys updated.

What does this mean? It means the Dead Robot Society has another video in the works. However this time, I don’t have to do it! Oh did I say “have to”? I meant “have the privilege of”. This year that privilege has been passed onto our new cinematographer, Abbie. I get to mentor someone! There’s someone in the BotCave that needs my help! This is a first.  I’m quite pleased.

I guess hardware and software are doing important things too… Today Albert, Joe, and Greg have been working all day on something they like to call “PerfectBot”. You can guess why. They think it’ll be perfect every time. I have yet to see evidence of that, sorry guys.

This week marks the week that we begin to open the BotCave on a daily basis. Competition is so early this year. There are roughly six weeks left. Last year I think I started the competition countdown at eight weeks and I feel like i started it way later than this! We’re gonna have to work extra hard this year. We have big shoes to fill. In case you weren’t aware, we placed first in our regional competition last year and third in the global competition. We can’t do any better at regionals, so we have to do at least equally as well. Even though it’s pretty far off, we’re hoping to surpass last year’s score at globals as well.

Alright let’s get back to this week. If you visit www.deadrobots.net the first thing you’ll probably notice is a big chart on the homepage. In this chart is our projected playing schedule for this year’s competition. We’ve got it all blocked out so now all we have to do is build the bots and program them. Easy for me to say right? I just blog about it. I love my job.

As usual, to me it looks like we’re making great progress. But let’s be honest, is there ever a week when I don’t think that? I have mad team spirit, what can I say. The BotCave will be open all day tomorrow (we’re capitalizing on the long weekend) so hopefully we’ll be able to continue at the fast pace we’ve been working at and hit on a good routine. Also, the more days the ‘Cave is open the more blogs I’ll be posting, so keep checking back for updates!

Our team is so dedicated that we have 13 kids in the BotCave today building robots rather than attending a Superbowl party. With our board built, we can work on our solution to the problem. I haven’t heard so much commotion in the BotCave since last season. From where I’m sitting I can hear Mr. Grasmeder and Albert helping the software team get started with programming. Also, I can hear Mr. Newcastle and Joe working with the hardware team, accompanied by a cacophony of sound produced by the rifling through of lego bins.

Kelly, Alanna, Albert, Justin, and Emily are working hard with programming the cameras to find tribbles. This will eventually be used so that we can pick up the tribbles and separate the different colored tribbles to score points. They appear to be successful at their endeavors because I’ve been hearing frequent squeals of delight. In connection with what software is doing, hardware is working on building something that will pick up tribbles. Synchronicity between the two teams is key.

I just realized I haven’t posted a picture of the game board yet. I’ll do that now.

2011 Game Board

So there you have it. For those of you that have seen boards from previous years, you’ll notice a distinct difference in this board from its predecessors. Instead of having the starting boxes diagonal from each other, they’re all on the same side. This means twice the amount of work for software. They have to write one program specific to the left side of the board and one program specific to the right side of the board. I’ve gathered from the many complaints that this will be somewhat inconvenient for them. Hehehe, I’m so glad I blog.

If you were to mosey on over to our wiki you’d notice that we have quite a few names on there. That’s because we have a lot of potential members coming in and out of the BotCave. For these few weeks leading up to the workshop on February 12th, we have all the new kids come and try their hand at hardware and software. Because people are coming and going, we can’t really get to work on the actual competition problem just yet. Therefore, what we’ve been doing around here is just some housekeeping so to speak. People are learning the ropes of hardware and software. I’m helping Abbie prepare to make this year’s video. I’ve been doing some updating on the website. We’re working hard.

I mentioned doing updates on this website. I specifically mean I added some quotes from last year’s season. You should go give them a read, they’re quite amusing.

There was a surprise waiting for us in the BotCave today. The board was built! Well, mostly built. A few more tweaks and adjustments have to be made, and some pieces have to be obtained, but for the most part we have a board to work with! Yay us!

I have one more exciting thing to tell you before I leave you today. Not that I’m super excited, BUT THE GLOBAL CONFERENCE IS IN CALIFORNIA THIS YEAR RIGHT NEXT TO DISNEYLAND! I’m calm about it. I’m fine. It’s not a huge deal or anything. I can honestly say I cannot wait until GCERs this year.

Yes, it’s that time again. It’s time for a few members of the dedicated youth of the Northern Virginia area to come together every sunday to build robots. First thing first I’d like to introduce you to our tentative team for this year. Our returning members include Greg, Albert (or Allison, I can’t remember what I was calling her), Kelly, Alanna, Mary, Alex, and me. However we have quite a few people in the Botcave today who have shown interest in joining the team. This list includes: Joe, Mikey, Ryan, Kevin, Justin, and Jason.

Let’s get some quotes from the new kids. When asked for a quote about his experience in the Botcave so far, junior Joe Griffin said “I’m having the time of my life!” For real, that was a direct quote. Ask him about it. Sophomore Mikey Luciani (yeah, he’s Kelly’s baby brother, I guess robotics is in their genes) said “I’m enjoying myself to the fullest!” As I was walking around collecting quotes, returning member and senior Greg Kurnos couldn’t help but exclaiming, “I love Botball! I love it more than life itself!” We’re lucky to have such enthusiastic members this year.

Something I’ve been witnessing, this week and last week, is a few competitions within the team to do some hardware jobs. Mr. Gras breaks everyone up into teams and gives them a few mini-challenges. The teams build little bots to complete the task Mr. Gras has assigned and then each team’s robot is put to the test. It’ gets pretty competitive I’m not gonna lie. They cheer during the runs, they clap after success, and they weep after failures. Okay maybe not weep, but they get pretty emotional.

It’s been a magical experience watching young people come together to make something as beautiful as a chassis. Don’t ask me what that is, I can’t even pronounce it. But seriously, from what I can tell everyone is having fun and I think we’re gonna have a really good team this year. No, of course I’m not biased.

Before I end this ceremonial first blog of the season, I wanted to take time to thank our mentors Mr. Grasmeder and Mr. and Mrs. Newcastle. This might sound like a line from a bad, Oscar-esque speech, but none of this would be possible without them. We appreciate the time and resources they willingly dedicate to us, so mentors if you’re reading this, you’re the best!

Still in it. It was a good match, we simply got to Botguy much faster and placed him on the line. If the other team had gotten to the island first it might not have been the same outcome. As the weaker teams continue to get eliminated, our opponents get harder and harder to defeat. We’re constantly working on our hardware and software throughout the day. We try to make minor adjustments that will make major positive changes for our robots.

Having one loss already, it’s really important for us to stay strong during these rounds of competition. In order to get to the final round we have to win the entire losers bracket. Plus, after we hypothetically win the losers bracket, we would have to beat the winner of the regular bracket twice in order to take home first place. Not exactly an easy task. This was our last round today. Fingers crossed tomorrow will be successful.

We were so close. TJ only beat us by twelve points. It was an extremely tough loss, not gonna lie. We knew TJ would be difficult to beat. On a side note, TJ made changes to their robots and strategies from Regionals that look strangely familiar. At a glance  you might think their bots are just our clone bots… Also, I’d just like to mention that this is our first loss this season, Regionals included, just saying. It sucks big time to have one loss this early in the competition, but I have a feeling won’t have such trying competition for at least some time. Plus Rick Astley  (in the form of Benjin) promised he was never gonna give us up and never gonna let us down. Take what you will from that. Let’s go round four.