Triumph and Success

Saturday our team, the LEGO Mountaineers, competed in the 2007 Spring Showdown at Newhall, Santa Clarita.  As I have posted earlier there were three divisions in this particular competition.  

First we competed in the mission rounds.  In earlier meetings we had determined the following order in which the pilots and co-pilots could compete:

Round One:  Emily pilots, Wendy co-pilots

Round Two:  Faith pilots, Amy co-pilots

Round Three:  Wendy pilots, Derek co-pilots

During the first mission round, Emily became ill and couldn't compete.  Since everyone had been able to practice at each role, Kevin was able to fill in as my co-pilot.

The second part was the sumo competition.  Kevin and Derek had worked very hard on the sumo bot area and they came up with an incredibly strong robot.  During this round, Kevin piloted and Kelly co-piloted.  Our team did very well in both of these divisions.

The third division was an on the spot event.  Each team brought a kit of parts and a computer to the competition.  After the mission and sumo events, everyone who was not on the team (That included coaches) left the building and the teams were given their assignment.  

This assignment was very clever.  All of the lights in the gymnasium were turned off and the judges placed a lit light bulb on the center of each table.  Our mission was to have the robot face the wall, do a 180 degree turn, drive toward the light, and touch it without knocking it out of a circle.  The tricky part was that the teams had to hand the robot we came up with to the judges to place in any corner of the field they chose.  

We were able to successful complete the turn, find the light, and drive toward it.  Unfortunately, our robot had some technical difficulties during the actual event.

The LEGO Mountaineers did very well in all three divisions and we were awarded the first place trophies in both the missions mat and the sumo event.  We also won the Director's Award which is the highest over all award possible.

Our team really enjoyed this event and we learned a lot about robot designs, torque, gears, arms, motors, the RoboLab software, etc.  

On behalf of the LEGO Mountaineers, I would like to thank Miss Wendy Mathis, Mr. Paul Kass, and all of the volunteers who made this event possible.  We look forward to competing again in  the future.  

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