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.