The rules stated that points would be given to the blocks moved to the score zone, and stacked. However, it quickly became clear that the rules were a little 'fuzzy.' Two strategies were used for most of the robots: move as many of the blocks to the score zone, without stacking, and stacking in small stacks.
There were a couple of unique robots. One, built by team college students Jay Kinzie, Peter Ehrlich, and Jessica Reams actually stacked a group of small blocks. The other, built by MINDSTORMS builder Steve Hassenplug, had a box that had sloped sides and a catapult. The box was moved to the score zone and the catapult threw blocks in. This was a clever solution, however, it did wreak havoc on the rules, as it brought to question what defines a stack.
The scorekeeper was Brian Davis, who unfortunately, didn't see the rules given out...so scores became a messy thing, as they were determined by multipliers and stacks and...
The competition went late into the night, and the winner announced at the awards ceremony was the Jay's, Peter's and Jessica's stackerbot. In terms of construction, it was the most complex of all the bots in terms of tasks, although there was another that used the table side to slide along and stack blocks built by Ron McRae.
All in all, it was neat to see robots for a challenge built within a few hours - and it was cool to see different solutions used.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
No comments:
Post a Comment