Minibot Competition at St. Louis

[Mark Sheridan]

What was the winning time?

[Alex Cormier]

Originally Posted by Mark Sheridan

What was the winning time?

It would be cool to see the top 5 or so.

[jspatz1]

Originally Posted by Mark Sheridan

What was the winning time?

I believe they posted our time as 0.903 sec. (not sure about that last digit.) Someone was close behind with .92 or .93. Wish we had taken a picture of the results whiteboard.

[548swimmer]

Originally Posted by jspatz1

I believe they posted our time as 0.903 sec. (not sure about that last digit.) Someone was close behind with .92 or .93. Wish we had taken a picture of the results whiteboard.

When was this, because I know that on Friday morning the Captians (3098) told me that their minibot was timed at about half a second.

[Vikesrock]

Originally Posted by 548swimmer

When was this, because I know that on Friday morning the Captians (3098) told me that their minibot was timed at about half a second.

I'm pretty sure you heard wrong. I'd be very very surprised if they had a .5 sec minibot.

[Aren_Hill]

Physics would be very surprised if they had a .5 second minibot

[Hjelstrom]

Wow! Now I know why our alliance's minibots were getting their butts kicked almost every match in the eliminations! :-)

[Bjenks548]

Originally Posted by Aren_Hill

Physics would be very surprised if they had a .5 second minibot

I saw the board, it wasn't .5 but I think it was 7.3 something. I know it was under a quarter second... and they were in second place. The fastest one I saw on Friday morning was .6 (some numbers after the .6 not .6 flat), sorry I can't remember the team.

[548swimmer]

Keep in mind, the minibot has about 18 inches with which to accelerate before the timer starts.

[CassCity2081]

We were having some technical difficulties on thursday which led to a .69 and .7 second timing of a minibot. We fixed the problem and had those two minibots retimed. I'm still trying to get the official results but 1986 was in the very low .9s i know. I want to say somewhere around .905, I will get the official results and post them here asap.

[jspatz1]

Yes our time was posted as .69 and another one in the .7s for most of the weekend before it was realized that his was probably a technical error, so many people saw those times posted. As much as I would love to have a .69s minibot, this was apparantly an error as we clocked at .90x in two separate runs later on.

[DarrinMunter]

Thanks for everyone coming out to our pits and having their Mini-Bots timed.

Yes there was a problem with some of the bots - the magnets they had were strong enough to induce a voltage in the wire that were in the inside of the pole for the switch plate at the top. That voltage caused a false trip to the timer. After removing the wires from the inside of the pole, this problem went away The students were explained this and also learned a term called "active low" and why it's used. To bad I didn't remember this from my school days when I designed the timer.

The Mini-bots that were tripping the timer early (and causing the supper low times) were retested and had their times corrected. And as Luck would have it, it didn't change their standings.

Congratulations to FIRST Team 1986 Titanium Robotics with a time of 0.900 sec.
They won the award we made, and the can of SPAM that was donated as a prize as well.

The top 5 teams area as followed:
1986 Titanium Robotics 0.900
3098 The Captains 0.920
2984 The Vikings 0.922
1731 Fresta Valley Robotics 0.955
931 Perpetual Chaos Robotics 0.965

Thanks again for stopping by, and if you didn't get timed - maybe we'll meet up and do this again at IRI???
(I would still like to see one hit the top, fly off, and then deploy a parachute)

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by Munter2081

...

Thanks again for stopping by, and if you didn't get timed - maybe we'll meet up and do this again at IRI???
(I would still like to see one hit the top, fly off, and then deploy a parachute)

I'll put up another can of SPAM for the IRI winner, if this happens.

RE: parachutes and such -- it would be really cool to see a minibot competition for style points.

[dodar]

How many teams competed?

[DarrinMunter]

About 40. We had this thread on here to let poeple know and also the students place flyers on the bathroom doors. - We even had a parent come over to check it out after reading that flyer!

One of our other local teams #2481 - Roboteers, posted a time of 0.818, but that was with a deployment ramp. This contest was mini-bot only; because we didn't want a line of robots blocking the walkway. So we told them this time didn't count.