6.270 Robotics Competition 2007 - Snakes on a Plane:R2
A Man Is Dead...What Happened?
Team Members: Matt Bieniosek '09, Rajeev Nayak '10, Curtis Liu '10
Our Robot: In the front is a ball pushing wall. In the back are two ball gates that were later modified to be pushers due to the unreliabilaty of the ball gates.
Click for full size
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Right View |
Left View |
Front View |
Back View |
Top View |
With wall dropped |
Drive Train: Two wheel differential drive driven by two motors per wheel. 1:125 gear ratio.
Strategy: Push the two balls into the corner first, back up, turn ninety degrees, push the four balls into the opposite corner, drop a wall, and move to the center to block it.
Electronics: Two bump sensors in the front, a gyro for moving straight and turning, 4 motors, 3 light sensors, 1 servo
Songs programmed: Snakes on a Plane, FFVII victory music
Results: 5-2, Eliminated in round of 9
We did not expect to do this well. In fact, in none of the rounds did our robot perform as planned, due to jammed gearboxes, faulty connections with the light sensors, broken pieces, and getting jammed against the wall.
Prelims:
First round win
Second round loss
Contest:
Third round win
Fourth round win
Fifth round win (this round we won 3-0 =D)
Sixth round win
Seventh round loss
What the name means: We played "a man died" riddles as we worked to pass the time. Rules are that you can only ask yes or no questions. Some that we did:
A man goes to an albatross restaurant and eats some albatross. He then goes outside and gets run over by a bus. What happened?
A man turns out the lights and goes to sleep. The next morning he reads that 40 people died. Then he kills himself. What happened?
A man is dead next to a rock in an open field. What happened?
A man is dead next to a stick. What happened?
A man is dead in a room, ten feet away from the walls. There is nothing else in the room except an answering machine and a key. There is only one entrance to the room, a door that locks from the outside. What happened?
A man is dead in a room, ten feet away from the walls and five feet from the floor. There is nothing else in the room except a puddle of water. What happened?
A man is dead next to 53 bicycles. What happened?
A man is dead in a phone booth. What happened?
Two men that are exactly identical in every way order drinks. One drinks his quickly, the other drinks his slowly, but the one that drinks his slowly dies and the other one does not. What happened?
Experience: We had a difficult time getting started. Our charger blew up the transformer twice besides having good connections, then we were given an already blown up transformer. Our first happyboard did not turn on. The gyro kept drifting randomly. Our gearboxes kept jamming up. Every modification we made weakened the overall structure of the robot and it kept breaking. Still, we found a way around all these problems and even though we got a double loss in the seeding tournament, we did very well. Unfortunately, we never got a chance to show off our wall dropping strategy (which is what all the treads are for). We had a great time building it and watching it work in practice (though maybe not in competition).