Servo - July 2010

Autonomous Vehicle Competition continued ...

Figure A. Elmo was popular! Autobahn finished third.

Figure D. Aerial winner, Team Robota.

2. Bon Scott, 3 minutes 12 seconds

3. Autobahn, 3 minutes 14 seconds

4. Autocrusher, 3 minutes 27 seconds 5. BlueBot, 50% complete

6. Buzzbut, 30% complete

7. Project 240, 25% complete

8. Geeknight Avenger, 25% complete 9. Jaunty Python, 25% complete

10. Sharcbot, 22% complete

11. Tinkerbell, 20% complete

12. B.O.B., 10% complete

13. Diminished Expectations, 3% complete

Figure B. Ground-based winner, Team Tobor.

There were also some special awards given to competitors whom the judges felt deserved recognition for efforts or results above and beyond the call of sleeplessness:

Figure E. The SparkFun employee band: Miles Per Gallon.

Engineer’s Choice Award: University
of Arizona Robotics
Kill Switch Award: B.O.B.
Rookie Award: BlueBot
Best Dressed: SharcBot

You might have noticed that the winner of the aerial competition had a negative time. Some explanation of the rules is in order to explain this oddity. For the flying competitions there were two special rules that could modify your time:

1. If you land autonomously, 15 seconds is deducted from your time.

2. If you land autonomously within the yellow tape rectangle in front of the judges stand (loading dock), 30 seconds is deducted from your time.

The first, second, and third place teams all landed autonomously. Team Robota landed in the taped rectangle and it was pretty amazing to watch!

When the judges were busy, SparkFun kept the crowd entertained with their company’s impromptu band (Figure E). These guys sounded great and kept the energy levels up when folks might otherwise have gotten bored and wandered off in between events.

There were a few humorous moments in the competition. The robot B.O.B. (Bounces Off Bumpers) had an electrical failure resulting in some smoke which required a quick application of a “kill switch” (earning him the Kill Switch Award), which prompted the band to declare a possible name change to B.I.F. (Bursts Into Flames). One of the aerial entrants searched for his flight path, but apparently got bored and flew off towards the foothills to the west of us. We learned later that the robot landed on the roof of the museum down the street. The plane was damaged during the landing, but the team came prepared with a spare. Another “interesting” event occurred when one of the robots landed on the roof of a nearby military aerospace contractor. This was a more touchy moment and required calls to Washington, DC to get permission to remove the plane from the roof of the facility. The contestants did get their plane back and went on to have more tries at the prize.