This past weekend was the regional robot competition at Williams Arena in MSP. The kids had a day to prep/repair the robot and then 2 days of competition. I was unable to make the first day but got to be part of the team on Friday and Saturday.
A few days before the robot had to ship there was an accident which resulted in a disabled computer. Unfortunately this is the key to everything. Mr. Doty , the man in charge, was able to order up a new one but the team had to spend the first day and a half getting the computer updated and reloaded.
The pit area
Once we were up and running the kids got excited. The other down side to no computer was the lack of practice. I gaurantee that each one of these kids could knock your socks off in Mario Kart but none of them are old enough to drive. None of them have any sense of what "real" actually is... So, at the end of day 1 competition, Bloomington sits in dead last...
Repair work. The game turns into bumper cars quite frequently.
Saturday turned out to be much better. There was a preliminary's session all morning then finals in the afternoon. The team quickly moved up the charts, jumping 10 other teams before noon. Unfortunately we weren't selected for the finals but the kids were pretty upbeat about moving up the ranks.
Chuck Norris Sharpie Beard?
There were some interesting characters at this place. I should have gotten more pics. The other thing was the amount of money that some of these teams had. It's about $5000 to get into this competition and you could probably expect to spend another $5000 on travel, parts, etc. Some of these teams were completely decked out and you could tell who had some good backing.
These guys were unstoppable in there crowns and capes.
No comments:
Post a Comment