[Grim Tuesday]

This year, we started with a rules test to weed out people who weren't serious and ended up with five good competitors. None of them had any experience so two of our former drivers came back and trained them in the necessary skills. Then we held two tests:

A time trial of a 'minefield' of chairs. They had to go around it forwards, backwards, in both clockwise and counterclockwise directions. Points were deducted for the number of chairs they hit. Also, our driver from last year (now graduated) watched to see if they got confused directionally by the 'front' of the robot being different in different directions.

After that, we held an official test which one of our team members had the amazing idea to have during our open house to best stress the potential drivers and simulate competition conditions. We cordoned off a quarter of the cafeteria and created a mock field, scattered with chairs. On one side were five taped out rectangles in different orientations and on the other was a mock feeder station. In the middle was a 'pyramid'.

In the middle of the open house, with about 50 random people looking at various displays in the cafeteria, someone yelled that the driver test would be taking place and everyone was welcome to watch. Of course everyone came in. Simultaneously, someone ran to tell the driver who would be tested that "they were late, everyone was waiting for them" (of course they weren't actually late, we just wanted to make them feel rushed). Once they got there, they were hastily told to make trips across the field, going to the 'feeder station' and then aligning in the rectangles which were called out by two people simulating a coach and second driver, sometimes conflicting. Once they were satisfied with that phase, we dropped Logomotion tubes onto the field and had them push them into the aligning boxes. This was timed and scored based on how many times these tasks were accomplished in 3:30. For the last 30 seconds of the test, we drove out an old robot (for the previous time it and its driver was obscured from their vision). Their task became to delay it from getting to the 'pyramid' but not touching the pyramid.

To tell the truth, the actual scores on the test were less important than watching the drivers actually drive and handle stress.