Hei Kern
Kelly
Yong Cheng (right) |
Penghui |
Tat Leong |
Guan Xun |
EDWARD:
The fatigue is getting to me.
So are the problems.
But I'm sure it'll turn out just fine (:
I'll have to end the day with a positive attitude, that's very important.
*snooze*
JIN KAI:
Work work work lunch work work toilet work work dinner work work panic! sleep.
PENGHUI:
As of today, our robots are 95% done. :)
Pictures do speak louder than words. Tomorrow’s the seeding, we’ll see how it goes. :)
(Sorry, the table’s a bit messy.)
HEI KERN:
Today I am so relieved!!! Our robot is theoretically at its full battle order!! We ran some tests and we were able to do everything either autonomously or with controls!! I am so happy our efforts paid off. Other teams are all on the way to completing their robots and all seem to be able to score many points. I do think our robots have a fair chance at the competition but I do not want to be too stressed out about winning because I have put my all into this robot and any results will satisfy me. (Well, it would be nice if I get something).
KELLY:
Good news: We are finally 99% done with our robots! (the mechanical parts at least). I’m really looking forward to tomorrow where we can finally test out our robots and see our hard work over the last week and a half pay off! Our group is going to attempt all 4 hacks so I hope it all goes well and that we will be able to score as many points as possible.
It has been a tiring half week with the atmosphere getting more and more intense as we approach competition day. The only things in my mind right now are our robots – not surprising given that we face our robots for about 12 hours per day or even more!
But we still managed to make time today to have our dinner at an Irish restaurant. After dinner we crossed the street to buy some awesome ice-cream. I had a microscoop which wasn’t very micro. It was a little cold on the way back to Studio 7 though; didn’t feel like summer at all.
GUAN XUN:
Today was pretty much the same as the day before. We got much closer to completing our robots, but the fact remains that they aren't completed yet. And that irks me. I am going to spend tomorrow, at all costs, to complete the code and wiring in the robots.
As always, I'm having great fun with my teammates. I really enjoy their company and I feel that it's kinda sad that all this is going to be over soon. But these are people whom I definitely want to keep in contact with and meet in the future if possible.
In these entries, I usually try to put in a paragraph about meals (which is what I'm doing now) because they can get pretty interesting. However, with the competition really weighing on my mind, I find that all I want to do is get back to the lab and continue my work. Time is running out on us and we have a round of seeding tomorrow to participate in, so we have to be prepared for that.
If I could change what I've done in this competition, it would have been the approach towards the building of the robots. I feel that the structure of our approach towards the design of the robots wasn't detailed and thorough enough. This resulted in us having to make many modifications to the robots whenever any unexpected problems popped up. And there were many problems that we had to fix. But then again, who would've known, and it wouldn't be possible to have this experience before committing these mistakes. So I guess this could be classified under 'learning from mistakes'.
Though realistically it wouldn't cost me anything if I lost in this competition (theoretically I gain as I've learned as well), I still want to win this thing. It is a competition and people will be pronounced winners and losers. And I want to win. So that depends on tomorrow!
YONG CHENG:
Today is the so called ‘final day’ to build our robot because tomorrow will be the seeding round for Robocon Competition. My team has finally completed our robot but again, we found out some problems and improvements that we can make. This is to ensure that our strategy can work and be adaptable to the different kinds of opponents we will face. After seeing the different designs of robots that our opponents have, it is not easy to have a robot of our own that can counter every single robot on the opponents’ side. I guess we will really have to do well for the seeding round tomorrow to maximize our chances of winning. So we still have one more day of building and improving our current robots...
My Chinese and French friends (:
Our main scoring robot designed to lift the police car to the dome, drop superballs and pull the cannon.
Team Copper Rocks~!
At night, I went out with the French and Chinese. We had a few drinks and Benoit went to play the piano at the second level. I didn’t know Benoit was such a good piano player! He could play almost any song that I know and I was really impressed. I guess the French really have the ‘French Touche’ which they keep saying that they have. Great music with great friends from Robocon. What else can I ask for more? Oh yea, maybe to be the champions in the competition.
So tomorrow is the seeding round. We will do our best! Wish me luck (:
IAN:
Unlike the other teams, my team seemed not to have much mechanical problems today. You see, by nighttime, we've completed all our robots. Just some programming the next day and we're done!
We've probably got the highest-reaching robot in the whole contest!
Purple Robots ready for deployment.
Some teams were seen to be doing better than us. Their team members were spotted practising the precise handling required to operate their put-police-car-on-the-dome robots. Due to the teams' close proximity at the contest table, robo-fights were inevitable; there is always the temptation to succumb to the primeval desire of asserting dominance over one's opponents. Cheeky attempts at poking another team's robot took place.
A robo-fight.
Hei Kern showed off his powerful twin VS-11-powered balloon air pump robot. Some of us were already gaining interest with his robot. And the most juicy bits of his robot came after dinner!
Hei Kern's balloon air pump robot.
A pair of SPH reporters came to the Studio to interview us all before dinner! So keep an eye out for our IDC Robocon 2011 news report on national English and Chinese newspapers!
The mass interview.
We ate dinner at an Irish Pub, The Asgard. The food wasn't as awesome as the other places we've visited. Nevertheless, we chomped down our dinners as usual.
Penghui wins the award for biggest mouth.
No one can resist the temptation of the best ice cream in the world. So we went to Toscanini's again, which was right across the road!
Shopfront of Toscanini's.
As usual, everyone in Robocon were inflicted with the kiasu bug and returned to the Studio after dinner to work on our robots and test them. Before dinner, Kelly's team (Lime) had already been the first team to test their balloon air pump and burst the balloon. When the loud 'bang' was heard, everyone put their tools down and gathered at Lime's working space like bees rushing to their hive. But the balloon burst prematurely -- it didn't grow too big before bursting -- so it was treated as a false alarm. Why the excitement over bursting a balloon? Bursting the balloon was worth 35 points. It was deemed a feat almost impossible after everyone observed the struggles of the balloon air pump builders in the MIT 2.007 videos who never went past putting 10 litres into their balloons, which gave them a meagre 10 points. As a result, all but a few teams, fully concentrated their effort at building a balloon air pump robot. Those teams did consider two advantageous reasons for pursuing the balloon air pump strategy: that 35 points would be attained with an almost 100% success rate with simple programming; it would also be bother-bot-proof. Other strategies did not give almost guaranteed points but they involved far easier challenges to surmount.
Enter Hei Kern's Brown Team, who successfully challenged all odds with their balloon air pump robot during their first full test of their robot after dinner. When their balloon was spotted growing to gargantuan proportions, virtually the whole Studio stopped work and rushed to see their robot at their workspace. Everyone was staring in amazement at the great size of black balloon that was still growing. The twin VS-11-powered air pump continued to pump furiously against the great pressure. The audience plugged their ears in preparation for a loud finish. The balloon did not burst, though the 2-minute time limit had passed. Before our eyes was an insanely large balloon that filled a lot more than the entire width of the table. It was about 30-inch long.
Hei Kern holding on to the already big black balloon.
Even after the balloon deflated, it remained kind of in an expanded form.
Rough calculations were made and it was deemed that the balloon passed the 35 litre mark, which means that it was an almost guaranteed 35 points for Brown. What a feat!