So, this past weekend has been good, actually. I am a part of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock competitive robotics team. We are the first University level robotics team in the state of Arkansas. We went to a competition in Houston, Texas this past weekend.
It went pretty well. We ended up getting seventh, though I am positive that we had the fourth best robot there. The reason we got seventh instead of fourth was that we got screwed over by the judges. The way the programming works, the judges can cut your communication to the robot. This makes it so that you can not move your robot before the timer starts or after it ends.
What happened with us is that our side of the field started experiencing a loss of communication. To be clear, it was not our fault, but the playing field's fault. After a while with us unable to move, but the other team being able to, the power went out to both sides. The judges decided to call the game and score it as it stood, rather than doing the proper thing and doing a redo. So, we lost the match.
We protested quite a bit, and were told that we would have a rematch at the end (it was a weighted round robin style). At the end, we never got the rematch, because they said they didn't have the time. So, instead of doing things properly in the first place, and instead of fixing it later, we got screwed over by the improper running of the tournament.
Regardless of that, we still won an award. We ended up getting the "Judges Award". Think of it as a mix of "best in show" and "sportsmanship". The judges liked our design, and the fact that we were helping out another team by literally doing their programming for them. So, that's something, anyway.
I've decided to stay in the teaching program for now. I figured I'd through that out there, since I mentioned in my last post that I was thinking about dropping it.
- Sapper Woody
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