Well, it's been over a year and another SECON competition has come and gone. Graham Hancock, our faithful cameraman, has finished his masterpiece and it will debut on Monday, April 13 at 1:00 p.m. in the Simrall Auditorium for MSU faculty, staff and students.
Here's the trailer. It brings back some great memories. Well done, Graham!
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Thursday, April 10, 2008
And now for the recap (long)
THE APOLOGY --
Well, it's taken me long enough, but I've finally reached an internet connection I can rely on: my own. For the sake of clarity, I'm breaking this post up into sections. After the last post, I went with the rest of the team to watch LUNAR compete in its second preliminary round, and everything happened so fast after that that I wasn't able to sit down and post.
Long story short: We came into the playoffs with 200 points (17 points higher than #2, and over 100 points higher than #3). We made it to the final round, sat through a 3-hour banquet, and lost the final match, coming away with 2nd place. It was disappointing, but we still did really well, and we're happy with our performance.
Now for the long version:
THE SECOND PRELIMINARY ROUND --
We got a great block placement! LUNAR chugged around the court and picked up the black block, a blue block, a white block, and a red block. Not the best collection, but it's exactly what we got last time, scoring us another 100 points. We almost got stuck in a corner, but our handy timeouts kept us from staying there for the remainder of the round. It's so awesome to see all of the contingencies we planned for come into play, and then to watch our design power through them or maneuver around them. Chris's gyro-controlled heading correction code has saved us more than once, and while it works against us from time to time, it's done much more good than evil.
We're now sitting at the #1 seed going into the playoffs!
THE PLAYOFFS --
After that we went almost directly into the playoffs, where we went up against #8, Pellissippi State Technical Community College's robot. Right off the bat, both robots collided head on in a race for the black block. They ended up getting to it first and picking it up. LUNAR wasn't discouraged though. He continued around the court and picked up a few blocks, but got turned around in the process. He thought the home base was somewhere other than its actual place. Luckily, PSTCC had failed to call time on their robot when it passed through their home base once. The second time it tried to go it locked up. Both robots had blocks, and neither made it back to their home bases. The solution was a rematch. After heaving a collective sigh of relief and adding a little bit of code to the robot, we started again. This time we were the clear winner, even though PSTCC's robot knocked us over the head a couple of times with its gripper. It thought we were a block and tried to pick us up :)
The second playoff was against University of Louisville, whose little robot ended up getting stuck on a wall thinking it was a block. Their pickup mechanism was not very reliable, so they programmed it to keep trying until it got a block. Getting stuck on a wall was a death sentence. We picked up the black block, followed by a blue and a red, and then went home. Winning this match got us into the championship game. Little did we know the boredom we would have to wade through to get there.
THE CHAMPIONSHIP --
After winning against Louisville, we took LUNAR into the banquet room to "calibrate," as the judges put it. We were not allowed to run our robot on the court, merely to turn it on in the room. It acted a little funny when we did this, but we didn't think too much of it because it only messed up a couple times. We put it in its box and left to get ready for the banquet. By the way, at this point, we assumed (naturally) that the purpose of the banquet was to showcase the top two robots and to finish the competition. How wrong we were.
We arrived when the banquet hall was still pretty empty, but people trickled in quickly, and they welcomed everyone and began serving dinner. By itself, serving dinner to a large banquet is time-consuming. But...when you add in the lovely fire alarm that went off shortly after our table was served, it took a ridiculously long time.
Apparently the project housing behind the VBC caught fire, and the sensors at the center picked it up and forced us all outside. Luckily, Theresa had not left her flat iron on, so it was not her fault. So now that everyone has trickled into the banquet hall twice, half of them being perturbed and the other half being perturbed and ravenously hungry, dinner can really get underway.
A long time passes...
We're all so tired that we're either falling asleep in our chairs (Bryan, Chris) or giggling like crazy (Theresa, Jeffrey). Well, and some of us (and when I say us, I mean people at the faculty table) are throwing paper airplanes made out of the bio sheet of the guy who has been speaking for an hour about who knows what.
More time passes...
They serve coffee...the coffee is eagerly drunk by the sleepers in the hope that they'll be awake when the people in charge decide to let us compete.
All this time, different people have been giving out awards. IEEE awards everybody. They even award the person giving the awards. After the IEEE proper awards, there were the student awards. We took heart because we were getting closer, we thought. They presented the awards for best t-shirt, best ethics paper, best design presentation, software competition winner, and a couple more that I can't remember, before they finally got to the hardware competition.
Now everything happens really fast.
about 30 people, made up of UAB members, MSU members, judges, and maybe some other people who just wanted to, rush the stage to get a good spot. If you're playing along with us, here are the rule/situation changes so far:
1) we're playing in a different room
2) the lighting is lower, and of a completely different quality (bright white light in the competition room vs dingy yellowish light in the banquet room)
3) the playing field is on the stage, where it has been on the floor in all previous matches.
4) there is a video projector on either side of the stage, much closer than during the competition.
5) there are way too many people up there, whereas before you could only have 2 from each team plus the judges.
Those are the major ones. So we start our little robot, and as it turns out, it can't see a thing. We pick up a few blocks on accident, but somewhere during one of the block pickups, UAB's robot bumps us. This traps the servo in the block tray, effectively preventing us from picking up any more blocks. UAB has already picked up a black, a blue, and a white and returned to their home base. To top it all off, LUNAR is lost. We know we're right there with him at this point, but we still want him to get home. By some miracle he gets home and we call time. UAB is the clear winner, and we can't dispute that. Walking out of that room, though, left a pretty bad taste in our mouths.
THE AFTERMATH --
As soon as we left the banquet, a couple of us took the robot back to our court and ran it. Surprise surprise, it worked perfectly, scoring its four blocks and accurately finding home. At least we know that it was the conditions, not our design, that put us in second place.
But insert a little reality check here: We got second place out of 40 robots! Even if you don't count the ones that couldn't score a block and get home, we got second place out of 9. As we said many many times that night and the next day, we built a robot to pick up blocks and get home, and that's what it did. All of the playoff rounds were essentially luck. Block placement, who got to the black block first, random malfunctions, all luck. And you can't beat the experience.
Anyway, there was no way we could have won. It's an even year! :)
Well, it's taken me long enough, but I've finally reached an internet connection I can rely on: my own. For the sake of clarity, I'm breaking this post up into sections. After the last post, I went with the rest of the team to watch LUNAR compete in its second preliminary round, and everything happened so fast after that that I wasn't able to sit down and post.
Long story short: We came into the playoffs with 200 points (17 points higher than #2, and over 100 points higher than #3). We made it to the final round, sat through a 3-hour banquet, and lost the final match, coming away with 2nd place. It was disappointing, but we still did really well, and we're happy with our performance.
Now for the long version:
THE SECOND PRELIMINARY ROUND --
We got a great block placement! LUNAR chugged around the court and picked up the black block, a blue block, a white block, and a red block. Not the best collection, but it's exactly what we got last time, scoring us another 100 points. We almost got stuck in a corner, but our handy timeouts kept us from staying there for the remainder of the round. It's so awesome to see all of the contingencies we planned for come into play, and then to watch our design power through them or maneuver around them. Chris's gyro-controlled heading correction code has saved us more than once, and while it works against us from time to time, it's done much more good than evil.
We're now sitting at the #1 seed going into the playoffs!
THE PLAYOFFS --
After that we went almost directly into the playoffs, where we went up against #8, Pellissippi State Technical Community College's robot. Right off the bat, both robots collided head on in a race for the black block. They ended up getting to it first and picking it up. LUNAR wasn't discouraged though. He continued around the court and picked up a few blocks, but got turned around in the process. He thought the home base was somewhere other than its actual place. Luckily, PSTCC had failed to call time on their robot when it passed through their home base once. The second time it tried to go it locked up. Both robots had blocks, and neither made it back to their home bases. The solution was a rematch. After heaving a collective sigh of relief and adding a little bit of code to the robot, we started again. This time we were the clear winner, even though PSTCC's robot knocked us over the head a couple of times with its gripper. It thought we were a block and tried to pick us up :)
The second playoff was against University of Louisville, whose little robot ended up getting stuck on a wall thinking it was a block. Their pickup mechanism was not very reliable, so they programmed it to keep trying until it got a block. Getting stuck on a wall was a death sentence. We picked up the black block, followed by a blue and a red, and then went home. Winning this match got us into the championship game. Little did we know the boredom we would have to wade through to get there.
THE CHAMPIONSHIP --
After winning against Louisville, we took LUNAR into the banquet room to "calibrate," as the judges put it. We were not allowed to run our robot on the court, merely to turn it on in the room. It acted a little funny when we did this, but we didn't think too much of it because it only messed up a couple times. We put it in its box and left to get ready for the banquet. By the way, at this point, we assumed (naturally) that the purpose of the banquet was to showcase the top two robots and to finish the competition. How wrong we were.
We arrived when the banquet hall was still pretty empty, but people trickled in quickly, and they welcomed everyone and began serving dinner. By itself, serving dinner to a large banquet is time-consuming. But...when you add in the lovely fire alarm that went off shortly after our table was served, it took a ridiculously long time.
Apparently the project housing behind the VBC caught fire, and the sensors at the center picked it up and forced us all outside. Luckily, Theresa had not left her flat iron on, so it was not her fault. So now that everyone has trickled into the banquet hall twice, half of them being perturbed and the other half being perturbed and ravenously hungry, dinner can really get underway.
A long time passes...
We're all so tired that we're either falling asleep in our chairs (Bryan, Chris) or giggling like crazy (Theresa, Jeffrey). Well, and some of us (and when I say us, I mean people at the faculty table) are throwing paper airplanes made out of the bio sheet of the guy who has been speaking for an hour about who knows what.
More time passes...
They serve coffee...the coffee is eagerly drunk by the sleepers in the hope that they'll be awake when the people in charge decide to let us compete.
All this time, different people have been giving out awards. IEEE awards everybody. They even award the person giving the awards. After the IEEE proper awards, there were the student awards. We took heart because we were getting closer, we thought. They presented the awards for best t-shirt, best ethics paper, best design presentation, software competition winner, and a couple more that I can't remember, before they finally got to the hardware competition.
Now everything happens really fast.
about 30 people, made up of UAB members, MSU members, judges, and maybe some other people who just wanted to, rush the stage to get a good spot. If you're playing along with us, here are the rule/situation changes so far:
1) we're playing in a different room
2) the lighting is lower, and of a completely different quality (bright white light in the competition room vs dingy yellowish light in the banquet room)
3) the playing field is on the stage, where it has been on the floor in all previous matches.
4) there is a video projector on either side of the stage, much closer than during the competition.
5) there are way too many people up there, whereas before you could only have 2 from each team plus the judges.
Those are the major ones. So we start our little robot, and as it turns out, it can't see a thing. We pick up a few blocks on accident, but somewhere during one of the block pickups, UAB's robot bumps us. This traps the servo in the block tray, effectively preventing us from picking up any more blocks. UAB has already picked up a black, a blue, and a white and returned to their home base. To top it all off, LUNAR is lost. We know we're right there with him at this point, but we still want him to get home. By some miracle he gets home and we call time. UAB is the clear winner, and we can't dispute that. Walking out of that room, though, left a pretty bad taste in our mouths.
THE AFTERMATH --
As soon as we left the banquet, a couple of us took the robot back to our court and ran it. Surprise surprise, it worked perfectly, scoring its four blocks and accurately finding home. At least we know that it was the conditions, not our design, that put us in second place.
But insert a little reality check here: We got second place out of 40 robots! Even if you don't count the ones that couldn't score a block and get home, we got second place out of 9. As we said many many times that night and the next day, we built a robot to pick up blocks and get home, and that's what it did. All of the playoff rounds were essentially luck. Block placement, who got to the black block first, random malfunctions, all luck. And you can't beat the experience.
Anyway, there was no way we could have won. It's an even year! :)
Monday, April 7, 2008
The smoke has cleared
Round Two: (recorded at the actual time)
We’re watching the block setup now. Our guys are on the court that’s far away from us now. Also, it’s the court that they didn’t play on the first time. We got a great block setup, and the robot performed excellently. We got to see Chris’ error correction code fix a possible error and we ended up with the same score as last round. That means we’re at 200 total points, and we’re the #1 seed! It was crazy.
Tennessee Tech is going now. They’re running at 90 points, so if they get a perfect round with a black block, two blues, and a white, without pushing any, they can tie our score. Now we’re just worried about getting hit by a robot in the final rounds. The problem is that if we hit a robot and don’t think it’s a wall, we will keep trying to “pick them up.”
Tennessee Tech has NOT run a perfect round, and therefore has NOT beaten our score. We still lead. Rock on.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Afternoon time schedule
We just got the new schedule, and we're playing our second preliminary round at 2:20. We've been tinkering with the code during lunch, just making sure that we'll be able to get home. Jeff and Brooke, who are on next year's team, are both here, and we've been supplying them with our sage advice on howto handle next year's competition, as far as questioning the rules and getting things set in stone.
There are still quite a few teams here that are full-on working on their robots. Georgia Tech's robot picked up four blocks and got stuck, so they weren't able to score the first round. Florida's robot, which even though it got a working hard drive, was having a slew of problems. It drove out to the middle of the court and started spinning in place. Another robot drove up on a block and got caught angled up. This building has been hell on every robot that uses a compass to determine its orientation. We're really glad we used a gyroscope instead.
At this point, there are only seven robots who have scored more than the ten points for getting out of the home base, and if it stays that way, we'll definitely be in the top 8.
Theresa just picked up a flyer about next year's competition. Apparently, it's going to be held from March 6-8, a full month earlier than usual. We haven't found out what the problem is yet, but we're really interested to. One good thing about having a much earlier competition is that the SECON team next year will have a LOT of time to clean up the robotics lab :)
There are still quite a few teams here that are full-on working on their robots. Georgia Tech's robot picked up four blocks and got stuck, so they weren't able to score the first round. Florida's robot, which even though it got a working hard drive, was having a slew of problems. It drove out to the middle of the court and started spinning in place. Another robot drove up on a block and got caught angled up. This building has been hell on every robot that uses a compass to determine its orientation. We're really glad we used a gyroscope instead.
At this point, there are only seven robots who have scored more than the ten points for getting out of the home base, and if it stays that way, we'll definitely be in the top 8.
Theresa just picked up a flyer about next year's competition. Apparently, it's going to be held from March 6-8, a full month earlier than usual. We haven't found out what the problem is yet, but we're really interested to. One good thing about having a much earlier competition is that the SECON team next year will have a LOT of time to clean up the robotics lab :)
Sweet sweet vindication!
The judges just came by and pointed out a FAQ containing a clear-cut rule that says that we can ALWAYS stop our robot before the six minutes are up. HAHA!
We're feeling pretty good. Lunch will begin on a good note, and that always helps with digestion.
We're feeling pretty good. Lunch will begin on a good note, and that always helps with digestion.
So...rules? I can't recall the definition
It seems as though the judges have no qualms with changing the rules before OR DURING the competition. I guess they rationalized it with the fact that they changed them between the first and second rounds, but I still say it's a load of crap. They told us that we can't bounce around the walls, which we were going to do so we make sure we end up in our home base. They said we have to stay in our home base and not touch our robot until the six minutes have elapsed in the head-to-head competitions, which could allow an enemy robot to damage us. This is pretty absurd.
So to sum up, we're doing well, and we're happy. However, the judges are changing rules willy-nilly, so we're not happy. We're also pretty hungry.
Funny note: people keep coming by to practice on our court or ask stuff about our robot. I think we're kind of intimidating. But again, confidence not cockiness.
The next round starts at 1:00pm, but I don't know when we're playing after that.
So to sum up, we're doing well, and we're happy. However, the judges are changing rules willy-nilly, so we're not happy. We're also pretty hungry.
Funny note: people keep coming by to practice on our court or ask stuff about our robot. I think we're kind of intimidating. But again, confidence not cockiness.
The next round starts at 1:00pm, but I don't know when we're playing after that.
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