we are so in over our heads

1/14: first snowfall of 2008

assignment 2 was due tonight (assignment 2 = strategy and timeline for our robot) so we met in the student center before going to workshop 2 to finish it up. cindy decided to rename the arm of sabotage (an arm that reaches into our opponents 4 point bin and scoops out their balls) to the raccoon arm of sabotage, a change that was rejected by emily. she doesn't dig the bandits.

we trekked down to lab for workshop 2, which was about building with legos. unfortunately, knight, the organizer leading the workshop, had seen a bunch of people's robots and was happy with them, which meant that he shortened his talk. emily, cindy, and i looked around the room and saw a bunch of groups with the bulk of their robots built -- and i think we each felt a sinking feeling in our stomachs. we were supposed to build a robot already??? where on the course website does it say that?!?

the three of us sat down for the next hour and a half and created a 10FLUx10FLU cube that could be dropped from 6 feet and not break. it was one of the exercises on the workshop 2 handout, but i think we were the only group who did this. after multiple unsuccessful drops, we finally got one to work. the corners of these legos are now a little bent -- some could call them battle wounds. :)

we turned in our assignment to knight, who proceeded to ask us questions about our strategy and what motors/sensors we were planning on using. now, i don't know what the other groups strategies were, or how course 6 students think about these things, but at one point, knight read the section on our arm of sabotage and stood and laughed for a good 30 seconds. we kind of looked uncomfortably at each other as this happened. he drilled us about our strategy, shot down a few of our ideas, and we walked away thinking "we are so in over our heads."

i think we will be happy if we create a robot that just moves and deposits balls. or if we can successfully complete assignment 3.