North Hills Quilter: Robotics

Saturday, March 21, 2015

Robotics

Today was a robotics competition in Davis where my son's group participated. They are team 701.

The competition this year is called Recycle Rumble and the goal is to stack the grey totes and put the green trash cans on top of a stack of 6 totes. The pool noodle goes into the trash can and you earn points for everything your team can do. There are teams of 3 and you get a score for each team. They average every round and the teams with the highest average at the end of the competition goes onto the final rounds.

There is an autonomous round at the beginning where the program runs by itself and you earn extra points. Then the drive team takes over and run the robot by a remote control.

There is a lot of energy in the room with dancing, music, cheering and lots of kids making new friends. Teams come from all over the US

The team got the Engineering Inspiration award.

During the initial competition, these yellow totes earn extra points if you can work together with your team mates to stack them on the white zones and then another team member can stack grey totes or the trash can on top. Cooperation is always encouraged in these events.

Here are a couple of the cans with the pool noodles inside them.

My son's job was to write a computer program that helped them choose team members. It analyzed how each team played, what they were good at and how they could help his team into the finals. He is in charge of the students on the team who scout and collect the data on all of the other teams that are at the competitions. It's like scouting a new team member for a sports team. He knows everything about every robot and what each robot is good at and how it can benefit their team.

They got the team they wanted and were very excited about their chances of winning.