21 Jun 2009
events
issy
mech-warfare
robots
Robogames 2009 is now over. Both of my bots faired quite well.
IssyDunnYet, my entry into the inaugural Mech Warfare event, won the gold medal. We didn't
ever get in a real ladder competition, too many bots had major issues, but Issy really did
quite well in all of his matches. I've posted a
tutorial on how Issy was built, over at
the Trossen Robotics Community.
GMR made another appearance, taking second in the Fire Fighting Competition. I'm not too
disappointed about that second, he lost to a team from an Indonesian University. They
were greeted at home by the Minister of Education apparently. GMR was using a reworked
version of Crater's code, including head panning and all sorts of other audience pleasers...
12 Apr 2009
events
trinity-fire-fighting
robots
Trinity 2009: What a whirlwind... It was not the weekend I had expected.
The Green Machine Reloaded won the poster contest. I finished first in the Olympiad.
But then the wheels fell off the whole operation... GMR didn't complete a single of his
competition runs on Sunday. I was disappointed to say the least.
While I'd spent countless hours working on GMR, on the side I had built Crater, what was
supposed to be a contender for the low-cost prize. I didn't expect much from a robot built
out of $118 in parts, built out of a small crate, using a single distance sensor. He was
slow. Really slow. Like almost slow enough that the judges would fall asleep. But he ended
up being reliable. Really reliable. He finished all 3 of his runs. He hit the candle each
time, which make his scores appear to be even slower (who knew such a thing was possible).
The senior division was split between 2 arenas for competition day. Crater's score was 3rd on
the leader board, then 5th. It then became apparent that our arena was running quite a bit
faster than the other arena, even though all three of Crater's runs were over, some bots in
the other arena had only made 1 run.
As the afternoon continued on, bots in the other arena failed their runs. Suddenly Crater,
was back to third on the leader board. But wait! That includes both robots in the Unique and
Kit division.. a quick look at the entry list. #1 and 2 on the leader board are KITS! Crater,
the cheap, slow, really slow, painfully slow robot had won the Senior Division. He outperformed
robots that probably cost 10x as much. He outperformed robots that probably got 10x as much
attention from their creators. As would be expected, Crater also won the cost-effective prize.
His 189 second final time for three runs probably couldn't have won any other year in the past
decade, but this year it worked just fine.
I should have noticed something going on Saturday. The "crate on wheels" was hugely popular..
the little green guy got almost no attention (his custom controller board, and wireless
debugging turned some heads, but he got no love...). There's just something people like about
animating everyday objects. His moving head, required by his lack of sensory, was also
popular.
This just further exemplifies, that reliability generally trumps speed in robotics, and that
reliability in robotics is really hard to come by. And of course, if the robot can look
cute or anthropomorhize itself all the better.
UPDATE: Crater's code is now on
GitHub.
30 Mar 2009
gmr
trinity-fire-fighting
robots
Trinity is just 6 days away. GMR is looking pretty good right now. Most of his code is completed,
he is completing 90% of his runs, with an average time of about 15-20s after bonuses and the room
factor.
Overall, I only hit about half of my goals with this robot. The overall speed is only about half
as fast as I had originally wanted, but is still about 30% faster than LGM3 was at the Canadian
National Robot Games. The room search is much faster and more reliable than LGM3 was, but I
really hope to still improve some other points.