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! :)
Thursday, April 10, 2008
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.
First Round Results
No more internet for me. It sounds like a major sporting event here. There are oohs and aahs from the crowd, applause and cheers when a robot succeeds, everything. It's awesome, crazy, nerve-wracking, and a little nauseating. We have so much invested in this, it’s hard to watch. We’re placed on the field now. Here starts the play-by-play.
The blocks are being placed, and we got the closest position for the black block (awesome). We’re getting a really good block placement, except for blue, but we should be able to get at least one of them.
The grid has been removed, and the robot’s started. We missed the black block the first time around, then got a red one. We followed up with a blue one, and it scared us because we thought it might have been stuck. Near heart attack there. It turned around and followed up with a white and then by chance it picked up the black block. It successfully got home and we called time. We took the six-minute penalty, but we also scored 100 POINTS!
That score currently puts us at the top of the list, beating UAB by 15 points. We’ll have to do some minor code changes before the second round, but no big deal.
Speaking of which, we just found out that the judges CHANGED THE RULES AGAIN! We’re so excited that they feel comfortable enough with our designs that they can change the rules and know that we’ll be able to compensate for them in the time we have between rounds. Andrew put it aptly when he jubilantly exclaimed, “Hooray! They’re changing the rules again!” Apparently for the second round we can't knock around from corner to corner until we find our base. We have to sit in the court for the whole six minutes. Joy.
Stress level has significantly decreased for now. Being on top is good, truth be told. But we can’t get cocky, that’s always bad. Confidence, however, is never a bad thing.
Awesome. That’s all I can really say.
Early Competition Results
One team has scored 85 points, by collecting 6 of the blocks and going home. They only scored their four lowest blocks because of that (hoarding penalty), but with the 10-point bonus for leaving the home base, they still netted 85 points and are now in first place. So far, I don't think that any of the robots have been left in for the entire six minutes, which would allow them to get a time of less than the maximum. This is fortunate, because if we don't make it to our home base, we'll have to withdraw as soon as it makes it inside the base. We know we'll be able to do this because we have it go to the home base it thinks is ours, and then make a complete circuit of the court once. If we get lost, doing this will let us stop ourselves in our home base. We'd like to thank Ricky for this idea. He pretty much saved our butts when he came up with it early early this morning.
Long update, because lots of stuff happened last night after I stopped posting. Speaking of which, I have no internet connection to speak of, so I’ll probably be posting after the fact and just leaving timestamps. I apologize that the Von Braun Center doesn’t know how to sustain a viable wireless internet connection. >:(
We spent the rest of yesterday tweaking the robot and checking out the other teams’ robots. At one point, we were sitting around talking about our next move, and the head judge/program coordinator came up and asked us if we would do a couple of runs so that the judges could learn how to judge. Naturally excited at the opportunity to give LUNAR a trial by fire, we agreed. Little did we know that this would cause a ruckus heard ‘round the arena.
SIDE NOTE: My writing is the product of around two hours of sleep, so I apologize if it’s weird. Or something.
From the moment we started our mock judgment rounds we were asking the judges to clarify rules. After working for 8 months with a set of rules we assumed was hard and fast, the judges began slightly altering certain rules or interpreting them differently from how we had interpreted them. We tried to view the rules as, well, rules, and followed them based on strict definitions of words. When the head judge began referring to the “Spirit of the Competition” as a basis for determining whether or not a robot broke a rule, things got messy. Here is a short list of our grievances:
- The block placement grid is not the size of the competition field, so the judges have to “eyeball” the placement of that on the field.
- When they place the colored blocks, they “eyeball” the center of the grid square in which it is located.
- When they place the black block, which should sit at the intersection of two grid lines, they set it next to the intersection, lift up the grid, and slide the block under.
So all these eyeballs were flying around, and we had to realize that the regimented block placement we've been practicing with for 8 months is not how it's going to be, and the friendly debate over rules escalated into a frustrating shouting match that lasted for another three hours. We were trying to follow the rules we had been given (and which had been undergoing change even until late this past week) and they were basing all of their judgment on this spirit of competition that no one could necessarily define. Overall, a frustrating and stressful experience.
Sparing you all the gory details, we were up until 4 working on the robot's "go home" function and complaining among ourselves at the incompetence of the judges and the flaky way this year's competition has been run. Two to three hours later, we were waking up half an hour late and grabbing breakfast on the way to the competition, still pretty unbelievable sleepy.
I think I've caught up to now, at least with the Reader's Digest version. I just found an internet connection, so I'll hopefully be posting pretty constantly today as the events of the day unfold.
Two teams have already competed, and both picked up one block, made it back to their home base, and were pulled out by their teams. This method ensures that a team scores points, but incurs the maximum time of six minutes, no matter how long it took them to get back home. The third team just competed, and it picked up four blocks and got home, which at this point secures them a top-8 spot, but it's still early.
We spent the rest of yesterday tweaking the robot and checking out the other teams’ robots. At one point, we were sitting around talking about our next move, and the head judge/program coordinator came up and asked us if we would do a couple of runs so that the judges could learn how to judge. Naturally excited at the opportunity to give LUNAR a trial by fire, we agreed. Little did we know that this would cause a ruckus heard ‘round the arena.
SIDE NOTE: My writing is the product of around two hours of sleep, so I apologize if it’s weird. Or something.
From the moment we started our mock judgment rounds we were asking the judges to clarify rules. After working for 8 months with a set of rules we assumed was hard and fast, the judges began slightly altering certain rules or interpreting them differently from how we had interpreted them. We tried to view the rules as, well, rules, and followed them based on strict definitions of words. When the head judge began referring to the “Spirit of the Competition” as a basis for determining whether or not a robot broke a rule, things got messy. Here is a short list of our grievances:
- The block placement grid is not the size of the competition field, so the judges have to “eyeball” the placement of that on the field.
- When they place the colored blocks, they “eyeball” the center of the grid square in which it is located.
- When they place the black block, which should sit at the intersection of two grid lines, they set it next to the intersection, lift up the grid, and slide the block under.
So all these eyeballs were flying around, and we had to realize that the regimented block placement we've been practicing with for 8 months is not how it's going to be, and the friendly debate over rules escalated into a frustrating shouting match that lasted for another three hours. We were trying to follow the rules we had been given (and which had been undergoing change even until late this past week) and they were basing all of their judgment on this spirit of competition that no one could necessarily define. Overall, a frustrating and stressful experience.
Sparing you all the gory details, we were up until 4 working on the robot's "go home" function and complaining among ourselves at the incompetence of the judges and the flaky way this year's competition has been run. Two to three hours later, we were waking up half an hour late and grabbing breakfast on the way to the competition, still pretty unbelievable sleepy.
I think I've caught up to now, at least with the Reader's Digest version. I just found an internet connection, so I'll hopefully be posting pretty constantly today as the events of the day unfold.
Two teams have already competed, and both picked up one block, made it back to their home base, and were pulled out by their teams. This method ensures that a team scores points, but incurs the maximum time of six minutes, no matter how long it took them to get back home. The third team just competed, and it picked up four blocks and got home, which at this point secures them a top-8 spot, but it's still early.
Friday, April 4, 2008
Lab coats and pictures
I'm not going to lie, Georgia Tech's robot is pretty awesome. All of the parts were custom made by their mechanical engineer, except for the rubber tracks, which came from a vintage RC car and are not made anymore. We were looking for rubber tracks, but could never find them. Blast!
They claim that their robot was inspired by Pac-Man, and they can A) pick up blocks while moving, B) sort blocks based on their value, and C) kick out blocks that they don't want. Theoretically, if they were fast enough, they could collect all of the blocks on the field and hold them until the very end of the time limit, preventing the other robot from getting them. Thankfully, at least we're faster than them.
AND THEY'RE ALL WEARING LAB COATS!
They're designing the competition next year, so I imagine it'll be a doozie.
We're still refining the robot. At this point, we're just testing over and over to make sure that it's as unlikely to fail as possible. Last we heard, only 20 or so teams of the 41 originally signed up for competition have qualified (which means fitting within the size constraints and moving out of the home base). This room is much emptier than we thought it would be. Oh well, less competition for us!
I've put pictures up in a public Picasa album. There aren't that many pictures, and even fewer good pictures, but I'll put more up as the weekend goes on.
Here's the link: http://picasaweb.google.com/Ted.Copeland/SECON2008
Thanks for the support and the comments!
They claim that their robot was inspired by Pac-Man, and they can A) pick up blocks while moving, B) sort blocks based on their value, and C) kick out blocks that they don't want. Theoretically, if they were fast enough, they could collect all of the blocks on the field and hold them until the very end of the time limit, preventing the other robot from getting them. Thankfully, at least we're faster than them.
AND THEY'RE ALL WEARING LAB COATS!
They're designing the competition next year, so I imagine it'll be a doozie.
We're still refining the robot. At this point, we're just testing over and over to make sure that it's as unlikely to fail as possible. Last we heard, only 20 or so teams of the 41 originally signed up for competition have qualified (which means fitting within the size constraints and moving out of the home base). This room is much emptier than we thought it would be. Oh well, less competition for us!
I've put pictures up in a public Picasa album. There aren't that many pictures, and even fewer good pictures, but I'll put more up as the weekend goes on.
Here's the link: http://picasaweb.google.com/Ted.Copeland/SECON2008
Thanks for the support and the comments!
Further competition analysis
We finally saw University of Florida's robot. It's crazy fast, and would probably damage some crucial part of our hardware if they crashed into us. On the bright side, we haven't seen them pick up any blocks, and last time I saw them test they just spun around in circles because their compass was messing up.
We're currently working out some kinks with the limit switch in the block tray. Sometimes it doesn't know how many blocks we've picked up, so we're attempting to make that more reliable. A team just arrived all dressed in lab coats. They're walking around with their PDAs making notes on everyone else's robots. Classy.
***THIS JUST IN***
Florida's robot, which as I said before, is running -- well, WAS running Windows XP -- fried its hard drive. While this is a regrettable occurrence and we feel sorry for Florida's misfortune...we're experiencing a bit of schadenfreude. Don't tell anybody. It's still very fast, and would still beat the hell out of LUNAR if it hit us.
That's all for now. This internet connection is terrible.
We're currently working out some kinks with the limit switch in the block tray. Sometimes it doesn't know how many blocks we've picked up, so we're attempting to make that more reliable. A team just arrived all dressed in lab coats. They're walking around with their PDAs making notes on everyone else's robots. Classy.
***THIS JUST IN***
Florida's robot, which as I said before, is running -- well, WAS running Windows XP -- fried its hard drive. While this is a regrettable occurrence and we feel sorry for Florida's misfortune...we're experiencing a bit of schadenfreude. Don't tell anybody. It's still very fast, and would still beat the hell out of LUNAR if it hit us.
That's all for now. This internet connection is terrible.
Arrival and espionage
This is the official Mississippi State University SECON 2008 blog. We'll be posting updates here (presuming we can get an internet connection -- the wireless in the building is terrible). The most exciting stuff will obviously come late in the day tomorrow, when the head-to-head matches begin.
We arrived in Huntsville last night and gaped in wonder at the size and magnificence of the Embassy Suites connected to the Von Braun Center. Dinner was at Outback, and we spent the rest of our time generally being lazy and complaining about the lack of free internet access in our hotel rooms. We caught 3 or 4 back-to-back episodes of The Office on TV, so that provided us with entertainment.
We decided that it would be better for us to get to sleep early, especially the people who have been staying up at the lab all night for the past week. So, in true college student form, we all went to sleep around 10 or 11 pm.
This morning we registered and started sizing up the competition and moving our stuff into the competition room. So far, none of the robots we've seen have been faster that ours, but that only matters if we get back to the home base. There really aren't that many people here, it seems. Theresa says that by this time last year there were way more teams practicing.
Because of the apparent shortage of teams, spying on our competition has been pretty slim pickings, but some of them are pretty good. So far, they have been slow but effective, generally getting all of the blocks in just under the 6-minute time limit. It's really interesting to see the teams that took approaches that we thought about but decided not to do, either because it was ineffective or because it was too time- and labor-intensive.
University of Florida's robot uses an exclusive vision system and apparently runs Windows XP! The Citadel is using LEGO Mindstorms parts and a magnetic compass, something we decided not to do because it can be thrown off by metal objects nearby. IR and sonar sensors are on every robot, but that's to be expected.
We're really glad that we decided to bring our own practice field, because some of the ones they have here are uneven in spots. Thankfully, they spent more time on the competition fields than on the practice fields, so the boards we'll be using tomorrow are pretty close to perfect.
Of course, we can't speculate on the outcome of the competition, but we feel good about our chances. Plus, we have the advantage of the other teams being intimidated by us :)
More to come!
We arrived in Huntsville last night and gaped in wonder at the size and magnificence of the Embassy Suites connected to the Von Braun Center. Dinner was at Outback, and we spent the rest of our time generally being lazy and complaining about the lack of free internet access in our hotel rooms. We caught 3 or 4 back-to-back episodes of The Office on TV, so that provided us with entertainment.
We decided that it would be better for us to get to sleep early, especially the people who have been staying up at the lab all night for the past week. So, in true college student form, we all went to sleep around 10 or 11 pm.
This morning we registered and started sizing up the competition and moving our stuff into the competition room. So far, none of the robots we've seen have been faster that ours, but that only matters if we get back to the home base. There really aren't that many people here, it seems. Theresa says that by this time last year there were way more teams practicing.
Because of the apparent shortage of teams, spying on our competition has been pretty slim pickings, but some of them are pretty good. So far, they have been slow but effective, generally getting all of the blocks in just under the 6-minute time limit. It's really interesting to see the teams that took approaches that we thought about but decided not to do, either because it was ineffective or because it was too time- and labor-intensive.
University of Florida's robot uses an exclusive vision system and apparently runs Windows XP! The Citadel is using LEGO Mindstorms parts and a magnetic compass, something we decided not to do because it can be thrown off by metal objects nearby. IR and sonar sensors are on every robot, but that's to be expected.
We're really glad that we decided to bring our own practice field, because some of the ones they have here are uneven in spots. Thankfully, they spent more time on the competition fields than on the practice fields, so the boards we'll be using tomorrow are pretty close to perfect.
Of course, we can't speculate on the outcome of the competition, but we feel good about our chances. Plus, we have the advantage of the other teams being intimidated by us :)
More to come!
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