Back from, but not entirely recovered from, our first robotics event up in Duluth. Sometimes when you go into action with an ambitious but untested machine you have pleasant surprises. Usually......not.
I have a lot of pictures like this....many hands reaching in to fix all manner of broken and loose things. I've been at this a while and can honestly say I've never seen so many things break. Some are small, subtle and yet important. Others are....
Yes, dismembered parts laying on the competition floor.
Oh well, this is bound to catch up with you when you go to the earliest possible event and with a very, VERY ambitious design. Murphy's Law is very much in action with robots and the only thing for it is to finish early and start stomping bugs asap. And speaking of bugs, our pit neighbors the Iron Mosquitos had swell hats. I put one on to amuse my grand daughter.
There is always some team mascot at these events that I like so much I must have a photo op. This of course is just to amuse myself. The Mighty Morphin' Banana Slugs are great people and it was fun to share parts and help even if we did not share in their very well earned success this time around.
Well, we have a few weeks to re-think, re-charge and re-build. Perhaps at the next event we will have more wins than shattered battery holders!
This is a clever and enthusiastic team. And did I mention ambitious? So they'll likely pull it off. I'm just along for comic relief. For instance, I noticed that the four on board tracking cameras are, for control purposes, labeled alpha, beta, gamma and delta. If we could just put an actual gamma ray laser in there we'd really have something. A disqualification on all sorts of points but almost as many engineering awards!
Sounds like our son John who went with the Woodbury team to Duluth. He said he noticed your team was in the other half of the event center
ReplyDeleteor he would have tried to find you. They had a good learning experience also.