Science Olympiad Robot Ramble Test Run

Additional pictures can be seen here: http://s845.photobucket.com/albums/ab16/dchash/My%20Projects/?start=all
This radio-controlled "robot" was designed and built for the Science Olympiad event "Robot Ramble" for the 2008 National Tournament. Robot Ramble was not an event at our school's regional or state competitions, so the entire device had to be designed, built, and tested during the few weeks between the end of the state tournament (when our team found out that it would be going to the national competition), and the start of nationals. The objective was to move all the items into box in one way or another, pop the two balloons, and remove a red balloon from the box. The balloons could be put inside the box in any way desired, the only requirements were that the two balloons to be popped were inflated. The rest of the board was set up in a specified manner. All objects had to remain within the innermost blue rectangle or they would not be scored, hence the wide maneuvering pattern to prevent knocking them outside the box. The robot itself had to be small enough to fit inside the box in its starting state, and use a 27, 49, 75 MHz or hardwired control system, but the design was otherwise up to the contestants.

Rather than try to pick up the materials and place them in the box (and, likewise, physically remove the red balloon from the box), the strategy of simply piling all the materials into the center of the board, then setting the box on top of them, was adopted. This also provided a convenient means of removing the red balloon: leaving it uninflated and on the floor of the box allowed it to be simply left behind as the box was moved.

We did very well at the national event, placing 8th out of 60 teams (scoring was based primarily on completing all the required tasks, but the tiebreaker was elapsed time).

The robot was built at my house with the help of my event partner. I controlled the vehicle during competition (and am the one driving it in this video as well).

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• science
• olympiad
• robot
• ramble
• hitec
• robotics
• balloons
• tennis
• balls
• notecards
• box
• Raleigh
• Charter
• High
• School
• nationals

[FighterDoken]

I'm impressed!