IDC Robocon – Day 11 – Seeding Day!

This morning was not a good morning. All of us girls completely, utterly overslept and almost missed the bus. We ended up eating our breakfast out of plastic cups so that we could ta-bao. The reason for our tardiness? This:

It vants to suck your blood…

Someone was a little displeased with the involuntary blood donation…

Due to our wonderful tiny leggy guests, we stayed up until 2am the night before to pack our things and change rooms. The three of us were shuffling around like zombies. It was probably not a good idea for us to be in the workshop, except that today is seeding day! No more serious machining, just some last-minute touch-ups and driving practice.

The format of the seeding is as follows: each team gets to drive alone on the track for 300 seconds to score points, and this is repeated so that each team gets to drive twice.

This is actually the track on the final day.

It was pretty cool seeing all the teams’ robots in action for the first time. (Most teams were generally quite wary of espionage.) Interestingly, all of the Machine 1 robots had a similar base design. They all had arms to create a section to store the balls and cubes, and a scoop to enclose the section and push the balls into the scoring boxes.

Red Team’s Machine 1

Red Team’s Machine 1 (side)

Machine 2 robots were slightly more diverse, with some augmented Machine 1-type designs, and some designs with arms.

Red Team’s Machine 2 (front)

Red Team’s Machine 2 (back)

But there was most diversity in the boat designs! Some had sails, some didn’t, some used a ramp, some used a raised platform, some used a lever to release the ball, while others used a temporary blocker.

Red Team’s Boat

Isn’t she gorgeous?

All three machines

And these were the results:

Seeding Results

Yes, my team is currently just barely in the lead, since we accidentally drove into the scoring box during the second trial. It is quite exciting, but nerve-wracking since there are some other teams that are also very good, such as the orange team (whose Machine 1 has a fan to blow away the quicksand). Hopefully, my team will do well tomorrow!.