Robots in Triplicate

Darius K. - OwlBot Programmer - 7th Grade

For the past month or so, the OwlBot programmers have split up into 3 groups of 2 programmers to come up with, design, and build a robot that they see would perform the best in the competition. Each team also created some demo programs to show the capibilities of their robot. Last week all the programmers had a lengthy discussion about the pros and cons of each robot. We decided to go with Winston and my robot. A variety of things influenced the decision.  First, our robot had a square frame, meaning it can align itself with the walls of the compitition table. Also, our robot heavily uses sensors to  keep track of where it is on the table. The other option is to use odometry, which counts rotations of the wheels to go a certain distance. When you initially start your robot, if you use odometry, there is a very small margin for error. If you use sensors, the robot can easily align itself with fixed points on the table.

After we chose the robot we will use for the rest of the season, we still have 3 sub-teams of programmers programming different missions. This week our team built the 3 robots each sub-team needs to program. We had to built our robot to exacting standards derived from the original robot. Everything from the size of beams and axles to the location of all the wiring had to be exactly the same as the original robot to avoid distinctions which can affect preformance. With multiple people programming on the same robot design, programming will be more efficient throughout the season.