Monday, March 19, 2018

Robot Larceny and Play

With competition season behind us we have free reign to show off our robot to sponsors, interested parties and the world at large.

The other night we went to the high school's "STEAM" night.  This rather unlovely acronym used to be STEM and stood for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. The artsy folks are trying to horn in on the current wave of tech popularity by adding Arts to it.  Silly, but I have no problem personally with tech having a bit of creative panache to it.

A FIRST robot is designed to run for a series of three minute matches.  It really is not supposed to run on a continual basis from 4:30pm to 8.  We blew one pneumatic fitting from overheating, dropped a couple of bolts on the floor and have a slightly bent part in our grabber claw.  Nothing that our pit crew can't keep running in other words.  A few pictures from the evening.

The Army had a couple of bomb disposal robots on hand for display.  We had a lot of fun with them.  Here our robot has been wandering about with a box full of candy (see the sign?).  We'd drive up to people and when they reached for a piece drop the elevator down to tease them.  Eventually the Army robot - which by now was being driven by our kids - decided to reach in and grab some.  This quickly became tug of war for the whole box!  There were also robot races, we dropped the yellow box on top of their $250,000 machine repeatedly and so forth.  Good robot fun.



Our team and the military guys.  Plus assorted spectators.   


You always keep an eye to the future in this business.  Here an intense grade schooler tries his hand.  He was not bad.....we'll see him in a few years.


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