I ref'd my last 2 robotics contests for 2014. Long days (7:00am - 4:30pm), but this weekend's events were held at Florissant Valley Community College. I like working up there, because they serve us a huge buffet breakfast complete with eggs, bacon, sausage, biscuits, gravy, and lots of fresh fruit. Big improvement over the granola bar we get at the other venues.
The high school contest was held on Saturday. Four medium-sized robots are on the field at a time - 2 on the red team and 2 on the blue team. These robots are mostly made out of metal pieces, but they are controlled by the same LEGO controller as the smaller robots. Two robots started at the top of ramps and 2 started down on the floor. The first 30 seconds of the game is the autonomous portion where the robots run around on their own based on programs the students have written. I'm always amazed (and slightly dumbfounded) at how many teams ignore this part of the contest and just have their robots sit there. All the robot had to do to get points was drive off the ramp. You wouldn't think that would be that difficult to program, but I will admit that one team programmed their robot to drive in reverse, so the poor robot did a back-flip off the ramp. Luckily it didn't incur any major damage, but it was a little funny to watch.
After the first 30 seconds, the robots are controlled by the students with joysticks. The goal was to knock out the blue and red sticks in order to release the plastic balls onto the floor - 160 in all. Yikes... talk about a nightmare to reset the playing field and we had 50 matches on Saturday!
Teams scored points based on how many balls they could put into plastic tubes. There were 4 different height tubes for each team. A few robots were really good about reaching up to put balls into the tallest tubes (the most points, of course), but most of the robots couldn't do much more than crash into the tubes. I don't think many teams spent much time practicing their driving skills before showing up to the competition.
Sunday's game was the regional finals for the LEGO robots. I ref'd teams from all over Eastern Missouri, including Camdenton and Cape Girardeau. The Rolla team scored the highest points - 476 in all. In all my years of ref'ing, I've never seen a robot score this high - almost 3 times the average. They had a really small, compact design so it could maneuver around all the obstacles on the playing field while scoring points. You can see this robot in action
here.
But while this was my last robotics event of the year, it's certainly not the end of robotics for me. I've got 2 new toys to "play" with before the next contest rolls around.
