Robotics

Well it's hard to top the last post as far as stories of the robotics competition go. Friday and Saturday didn't have quite the dramatic moments. For one I forgot to pay attention to the scores. I like to photograph so this is what I was doing while their robots were on the field. I also liked to turn around and see if there were any great moments written on the kid's faces. I wasn't able to catch any so that was a bit of disappointment. Not that there weren't intense moments, I just didn't catch them in pixels.

Friday was a disappointing day for other reasons too. As I recall they either lost all their matches or didn't score enough points to have qualified. Something along those lines. As you can imagine with 40 kids on the team they couldn't all be working on it at once. So a lot of these kids were doing things in between competition rounds. The main organizers play music all day long and it is fast paced dance music to keep your heart revved up and rhythm going. At one point they had a disco song about a train, doing the locomotion? The tallest member of our team seemed to be a natural leader. Next thing you know he's got eighty plus kids in a train weaving around the stands, through the stands, in the lobby. It wrapped around and around and around. Then they would do the electric slide and the adults would get involved. It was a blast of spontaneous communication between people from all the different teams.

Costumes reign. Mascots are in. Most importantly, the robots are tested. Did the theory that defensive strategy was a winning strategy pan out? Did the use of eight wheels when everyone else used fewer ones give us an advantage? Was that fickle brain pickled? Sigh, at the end of the day we are ranked near the bottom. Did that hinder the kid's spirits? No way. Karaoke at the Science Museum. We have budding rock stars on the team.

Saturday. Well by this time I was reminded that I'm over forty and two decades away from those energetic years when I could have dance music blasting its way into my brain and feel energized. I was now exhausted. I was also ready to try some experimental photography. Fortunately the Technoromancers were not first on the list to play. Oh did I tell you that's our robot's name? So I walked around trying to find a way to do something called panning. If done successfully this would make the robot be in focus while everything around it was blurred as if it is moving really fast. It's also very difficult to achieve. So I set up the tripod everywhere trying to figure out how to make this work. I finally found an acceptable place way high up in the bleachers and I would zoom in. The practice shots came out okay but that was about it. Just when the Technoromancers took the field, wouldn't you know it, the giants for human beings that were seated right in front of me, stood up with video cameras. I almost cried. As a matter of fact I went to the media table with tears in my eyes and pleaded with them to please let me have a media pass for just one round. They did.

Oh wait, did I mention that the robot won that round? That's what one of the mentor's told me. Poor Sadie halfway through his explantion of how this game works and where they were in the rankings he figured out my eyes were glazing over. Speaking of Sadie did you know that when Qimonda folded most of the mentors left our robotics team? Sadie stayed. We owe him a round of appreciation.

So after I pleaded with tears in my eyes for the media pass they let me borrow one. I took several photos in a practice round. They were great and I full of anticipation. When our robot came on the field I snapped away like this was digital and it didn't cost me a dime, well it was digital, but it does cost a lot of time to sort through all those blurred photos to find the one good one. At one point I knew I had it. I had the robot flying by in focus while the background was blurred. I was so excited I was jumping up and down nearly screaming like I'd just won the world. The kids were too. Later one of them told me, "we wondered what you were excited about." They were excited about winning. Technoromancer was a beauty or a stud, are robots he's or she's? Alas Friday's defeats meant we were still not up high in the rankings but Saturday's wins meant we had a chance at being picked by another team to be a part of their alliance. It didn't happen. By noon the competition was over for Technoromancer. Did this put a damper on the kid's spirits? Oh no. They did the YMCA song, lead a train past the judges giving them high fives along the way, and talked to other teams who didn't make it.