Student Robotics
Student Robotics is a
volunteer based organisation that runs an annual free-to-enter robotics
competition for 16- to 18-year-olds. Competitors design, build, program and
develop fully autonomous robots to compete in non-contact challenges.
This years game saw us develop robots that
used a web camera to scan QR codes (known as tokens) to navigate the arena and
rotate cubes such that the team colour faced upwards. Cubes had 4 colour faces,
belonging to the 4 teams that took part, and 2 neutral faces. Different
cubes had a different order of coloured faces..
I lead our team, from Brockenhurst College and
was in charge of design and development, using my expertise to construct the
robot and collaborate with the programming team.
Our main tactic was to flip the boxes using a giant "whisk",
allowing us to consistently come first or second in our games.
The team made it to the final where we came across an unpredictable error - the Student Robotics staff provided each team with a memory stick at the start of each round, this would tell the robot its team colour. During the final the memory stick came loose and jammed our box turning mechanism, halting the robots process.
The team made it to the final where we came across an unpredictable error - the Student Robotics staff provided each team with a memory stick at the start of each round, this would tell the robot its team colour. During the final the memory stick came loose and jammed our box turning mechanism, halting the robots process.
