Wild Weasil Takes the Lead at Waterloo 2009 Robot Race

UBC Team Thunderbid sweeps 2nd and 3rd Overall. Snowfury Mklll: Wild Weasil. sails past it's teamates in the Waterloo Robot Race Sat11July2009. aka the Aircraft Carrier...Note the small hook. THis was the Wild card of the race as it was entered moments before the drag race where it went off course at the last two cone. The Optics were reconfigured by Tim and off it went. Aussie Rules Robot Racing was applied as countermeasures to a strange, incoherent ,incomprehensible and somewhat indecisive judge. These delays were overcome by the sheer speed and underdamped feedback behaviour. Some of the sharp turns and many narrow misses explain that. What the Orange U-haul was there for I don't know. Snowfurry Mklll was a collaboration of all the team members from "The Originals" with their HUMV2006 Racer up to and including the 2009 Team Snowfront. We fielded 6 racers at Waterloo on the 11th of July with a last minute entry just before the Drag race of the rebuilt Snowfury Mklll using a single colour camera and SHARP IR sensors. The machine was made out of scrap and spares. It was far less capable then Team Glockenspiel's QUARTZ which could extricate itself from peril and had a laser scanner, instead Wild Weasil was very fast. The BSG-Sys proved helpful. With penalties applied the high speed ratio box helped it walk with impunity even with a dwindling motor battery. The starting delay cost every racer that day as the air fuel starting cannon failed to go off for minutes. THere was a tiny non sharp brass hook in the Front RHS quadrant of Wild Weasil that was a feature of no particular use except for the beauty contest which weighted as much as each race did. Hey it's gotta look good even with its intestines hanging out eh? Beauty was not the point. Winning this heat made up for all the yucky results of the beauty contest as well as hitting the last two cones on the drag race...Dang. The four different racers were good examples of close variations on form, function and racing strategy.
Here's the link to the pre-drag race list:
http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~rracing/contestants.html

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Science & Technology

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• Drunken Weasil