all together, 3, 2, 1...

Back when G-bot was in grades 7,8 and 9 he was on his high school's robotics team. Due to academic trouble, he wasn't on the team in grades 10 and 11, however, now he is a mentor on the team.

Back when he was on the team, 4+ years ago, I went with him to a few of the competitions that the robot would participate in. I decided to go again this past weekend. He (G-bot) did not organize himself sufficiently to actually make the team bus, so while I had purchased my travel and lodging a full month in advance, I ended up adding him to my booking at the last minute.

Friday morning early, we caught the night bus to get into the city, walked to where the intercity-bus terminal is, and caught the 6AM bus to Sherbrooke. Conveniently, the first stop in Sherbrooke that the bus would go to was at the University, which is exactly where the robotics event would take place.

Once I got in and settled myself, this is my first photo of the 'field'; what they call the area where the robot competition is supposed to be.

Here is the video that shows what the competition is about:


Here is a photo taken at the end of a round, where some of the robots managed to suspend successfully:

G-bot's team's robot seemed to be matched on very successful alliances on the first day of competition (Friday) which kept them near or at the top of the rankings for almost the full day. This was in sharp contrast to their robot's abilities. Their robot managed to score in three specific ways:
1. During autonomous play (the first 15 seconds) their robot very consistently put three power cells (the yellow balls) into the lower power port. This would generate six points, and also move the team closer to completing stage 1.
2. During tele-operated play, the robot was able to pick up to four power cells and then deliver them into the lower power port, one point for each power cell delivered. The driving was not particularly smooth, the ball retrieval system wasn't always successful, shooting the power cells into the lower power port succeeded almost all of the time. During this phase the team would generally produce between 4 and 10 points.
3. At the time there is only 30 seconds left during the tele-operated play, a warning signal sounds giving the teams a notice that they should put their robots into the shield generator and see about suspending there. If a robot succeeds in being suspended and remaining suspended five seconds past the end, the robot earns 25 points. If two robots suspend and make it so that the bar is level, an additional 15 points are awarded. The team's robot suspended successfully perhaps a little more than half the time, and on two occasions, was on an alliance that gained the 15 points bonus.

So in a good match there'd be 6 points for the autonomous play, 10 points during tele-operated play, 25 points for suspending successfully, and potentially a share of the 15 point bonus, for having a level bar, so we'll count that as 7.5 points. A good match would generate 48.5 points while a round where the autonomous failed, only a few power cells were put into the lower port, and the robot just managed to get to the shield generator, the robot would generate 7 or 8 points.

Some of the strongest robots of the tournament would be able to shoot into the upper port their three starting power cells, pick up three more, and launch those into the upper port, all within the autonomous period. Then, during the match, they'd be able to launch between 10 and 25 power cells into the upper port, about a quarter of the time into the inner port which gets the most points. And finally, they would consistently be able to suspend.

On that Friday evening, I walked to the AirBNB while G-bot went with the team. Then I walked to the restaurant where the whole team was gathering to eat. I arrive second after a family had already arrived and I sat with them and we chatted. Then the whole team arrived at once. G-Bot and I walked back to the apartment after dinner.

The next morning it was -11C outside, and the apparel I had brought was not appropriate for that temperature, so we were going to Uber to the university, but Uber told us there was nothing available, so we took a taxi instead. Later on in the day on Saturday a band came and played during some of the down time of the competition.

They covered some popular songs and also sang some French songs.

During the alliance selection, it worked out that though their team ranked 7th, they ended up being captain of Alliance #4. Their team was eliminated, losing to Alliance #5 in two matches.

I stuck around to the end, and also to all of the awards that were granted; there wasn't a rush as our bus home was leaving at 8PM, and everything wrapped up by 6PM. What was interesting was to see the actual size of represented teams. Here is an award that was granted to a team with a fairly typical size of members:

And then a different award was given out and this team was massive:

I did not want to summon a taxi at the sports center where this event was taking place as there was so much traffic of people leaving in buses and cars, so we walked through the University campus to end up on the other side of it, and summoned a taxi there. I had an app on my phone where we could track where the taxi was going and it kept getting further away from us. Eventually we cancelled it, called a taxi company, and were picked up soon after.

We grabbed a burger and fries from a restaurant adjacent to the bus stop, caught the bus okay, and got back home before midnight.

Their team is also competing at an event in my city, at the Olympic Stadium, taking place Easter Weekend. I will most definitely go to that one too. If their team can be more consistent and get 40-45 points in every match, I think that ought to place them better.