Glorious Robot Picspam
We fortuitously heard that the Granite State Regional FIRST Robotics Competition was going on this weekend (and was FREE) in time to drive up there and see the finals on Saturday. We are nerds, and we revel in it.
It was held in the hockey stadium. All those people in matching shirts are the teams. All the teams were made up of high schoolers. They were very enthusiastic. They kept breaking into dance and doing the wave. You should have seen them doing YMCA. XD Nothing like a song about thinly-veiled gay sex and associated swishy line dance to get the kids pumped up.
Here we see the master of ceremonies introducing the robot teams. Each robot had up to 4 people in working on its controls and tossing it innertubes, and the robots were in alliances of 3. It took us forever to figure out the rules because they were all complicated. Note that all the teams are standing way back from their control boards. This is because in the first round of each match the robots had to be completely autonomous.
Here's the first round! Apparently, not all the robots had autonomous capabilities, so their success at autonomously putting a ring onto those 'spider legs' was a bonus for their alliance, not scored separately. The blue lights on the top of the spider legs were there so the robots could 'see' them and know where to put the ring. Note also that the spider legs are only held together with chain things, so they can swing around. The autonomous robots only got the rings on maybe less than a quarter of the time, but the first round was still cause for huge excitement.
Then, the second round begins, drivers leaping to their controls! Now they're trying to score points by making rows and columns of tubes.
Aren't they cute? We never did figure out wtf the black tubes were for. Maybe they were for disrupting the other team's row of tubes somehow. The teams lost points if they knocked any tubes off or pinned other robots for too long, but they were allowed to put tubes on top of the tubes already hanging on the legs.
Take note of the shiny metal one bullying the red one. It didn't have any grabber arms at all. This was clearly a strategic decision because...
The other way to score points was to have your team's robots lifted off the ground in your team's end zone at the end of the match! Here, the little blue ones are trying to climb up onto their team mate's inviting pink ramps, whilst being hounded by the white one. The white one was a big bully - it was built by the coast guard academy in Rhode Island.
That ramp strategy was worth big points! Here, both team mates are poised on top of the grabberless shiny metal one from before, which was really just one big foldable ramp. This netted them an unstoppable number of points every round and they eventually won the whole tournament.
♥ ♥ ♥ Robots yay!
It was held in the hockey stadium. All those people in matching shirts are the teams. All the teams were made up of high schoolers. They were very enthusiastic. They kept breaking into dance and doing the wave. You should have seen them doing YMCA. XD Nothing like a song about thinly-veiled gay sex and associated swishy line dance to get the kids pumped up.
Here we see the master of ceremonies introducing the robot teams. Each robot had up to 4 people in working on its controls and tossing it innertubes, and the robots were in alliances of 3. It took us forever to figure out the rules because they were all complicated. Note that all the teams are standing way back from their control boards. This is because in the first round of each match the robots had to be completely autonomous.
Here's the first round! Apparently, not all the robots had autonomous capabilities, so their success at autonomously putting a ring onto those 'spider legs' was a bonus for their alliance, not scored separately. The blue lights on the top of the spider legs were there so the robots could 'see' them and know where to put the ring. Note also that the spider legs are only held together with chain things, so they can swing around. The autonomous robots only got the rings on maybe less than a quarter of the time, but the first round was still cause for huge excitement.
Then, the second round begins, drivers leaping to their controls! Now they're trying to score points by making rows and columns of tubes.
Aren't they cute? We never did figure out wtf the black tubes were for. Maybe they were for disrupting the other team's row of tubes somehow. The teams lost points if they knocked any tubes off or pinned other robots for too long, but they were allowed to put tubes on top of the tubes already hanging on the legs.
Take note of the shiny metal one bullying the red one. It didn't have any grabber arms at all. This was clearly a strategic decision because...
The other way to score points was to have your team's robots lifted off the ground in your team's end zone at the end of the match! Here, the little blue ones are trying to climb up onto their team mate's inviting pink ramps, whilst being hounded by the white one. The white one was a big bully - it was built by the coast guard academy in Rhode Island.
That ramp strategy was worth big points! Here, both team mates are poised on top of the grabberless shiny metal one from before, which was really just one big foldable ramp. This netted them an unstoppable number of points every round and they eventually won the whole tournament.
♥ ♥ ♥ Robots yay!