I ref'd the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) robotics competition on Saturday, an event designed for high school students. They use the same controller as the one used in the LEGO robotics contest, but their robots are built from metal components rather than plastic beams. FTC robots are bigger and stronger than LEGO robots (definitely more exciting to a high school student), but that also brings a whole new set of issues.
This competition starts with a 30-second autonomous phase, totally robot-controlled (no human interaction). The task this year was to park the robot in a corner of the playing field and/or push a bowling ball along with it. Not too tough if your robot gets the outer corner on the starting ramp, but a little trickier if you draw the inside position, given all the playing pieces scattered around the field.
During the next 2-minute operator phase, 2 students "drive" the robot with 2 separate joysticks. Talk about an exercise in teamwork and cooperation. One student usually controls the positioning of the robot (forward/backward motion and turns), while the other student controls the attachments (lift arms, grabbers, scoopers, etc). In this contest, robots were trying to flip over plastic bins, place one or more racquetballs inside them, and then stack them on top of one another. Hard enough to do if you are the only robot on the field, but there were FOUR robots competing with each other at the same time. Very chaotic, to say the least.
I ref'd the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) robotics competition on Saturday, an event designed for high school students. They use the same controller as the one used in the LEGO robotics contest, but their robots are built from metal components rather than plastic beams. FTC robots are bigger and stronger than LEGO robots (definitely more exciting to a high school student), but that also brings a whole new set of issues.
This competition starts with a 30-second autonomous phase, totally robot-controlled (no human interaction). The task this year was to park the robot in a corner of the playing field and/or push a bowling ball along with it. Not too tough if your robot gets the outer corner on the starting ramp, but a little trickier if you draw the inside position, given all the playing pieces scattered around the field.
During the next 2-minute operator phase, 2 students "drive" the robot with 2 separate joysticks. Talk about an exercise in teamwork and cooperation. One student usually controls the positioning of the robot (forward/backward motion and turns), while the other student controls the attachments (lift arms, grabbers, scoopers, etc). In this contest, robots were trying to flip over plastic bins, place one or more racquetballs inside them, and then stack them on top of one another. Hard enough to do if you are the only robot on the field, but there were FOUR robots competing with each other at the same time. Very chaotic, to say the least.
