Saturday, April 6, 2002

Robotkampen

The first annual LEGO-competition at Framtidsmuseet in Borlänge. Of course was Harri and I there and competed with the kids. Yes, we were the only adult team and we competed under the name CityBrickers.


Tobbe in the back and Harri in the front, febrile building.




The course. Start in lower right corner and points awarded for every white zone entered. Two yellow balls to push down (with points in red) for bonus points. If something is destroyed on the course or if the robot has to be handled points are deducted.




Constant queuing to get access for practice runs.





One of the other competitors robot.





Tobbe places the robot in the start position while Röde superintends.





Why won't it work? After the competition we found that the light sensor accidentally got moved during the day, after that all the sample readings was off. D'oh!




Competition about to start.




Our robot. Notice the man on the mast. A comb for raking down the bonus balls, touch sensors on the sides to steer clear of the edges and the light sensor in the middle for detecting when a new zone was reached.





Our robot was both the slowest and the widest.




The rules were written with a big loop-hole, if a dumb robot only drove straight it could be lifted and rotated in the two corners and this would still have got second place - if the bonus balls were pushed down. Luckily no one detected or used that loop-hole.




The prices. We won the 9754 Dark Side Developer Kit for most ambitious robot thanks to our side detecting system. The robot was a big failure however, we were the only team to return back to the start. :D




Splitting the winnings into two equal piles, then we had bidding on the odd parts.

Friday, April 5, 2002

Line Follower

This is a robot I made to relearn NQC since I and a friend were to attend a robot challenge in Borlänge. I had not used the RCX in a year and lost most of my programming skills.

The robot itself is a standard RIS model adopted to follow a line. The program itself is the "clever" part of this creation. It remembers if it was performing a left or right turn thus having some logic when it comes to finding the line in a bend.






The 'bot had no problem driving around my tape course.