Robonanza 2016
You say banana, I say Robonanza. At the groggy time of 8:30 am on June 22, a time unheard of since the end of the school year, we, the Funky Monkeys, loaded up a truck, packed our bags, and headed to the sixth annual Robonanza. This event was hosted by Intuitive Surgical (not by us, as the banana pun earlier would seem to suggest), a company geared towards the medical robotics industry. Just in case you don’t know what Robonanza is, it’s a robotics gathering that offers local FIRST teams a chance to show off the robot they built during the year’s build season to other teams and Intuitive Surgical employees. This is achieved through a series of polite inquiries and fast-paced matches related to the year’s game, FIRST Stronghold. For the (hopefully) few of you that clicked on this post simply because you can’t stand the thought of an unread post sitting on the previous page and prefer the tl;dr side of things, then here it is: The weather was hot, they had free food (and ice cream sandwiches!), the cheval de frise could hardly go one round without dying a horrible death, our shooter screwed around with us, and we were on TV. But for those with a longer attention span, let’s dive in!
The Funky Monkeys in front of the snack stand with Intuitive Surgical employees.
There’s not much to be said about packing up for the event, so let’s skip to the set up on Intuitive Surgical’s campus. Each team got a conveniently-shaded stand-area-thing to display team-related items and the robot, notwithstanding the super upsetting fact that there were only three chairs to go around per stand. We were the first team to arrive by at least an hour, leaving us scratching our heads as to whether or not we came way too early or we were just extremely punctual (just go with the latter). We were also the only team to have rented a truck, since we were supplying the event with some of our defenses, and one of the only teams to not have a longish banner at our stand; this is beside the point, but I’ll let you draw your own conclusions on that.
Shikhar Jagadeesh, Ria Pradeep, and Aayush Shah pose behind Monkey Python.
As the other teams were trickling in, we helped ourselves to the free snacks and somewhat lended a hand to the teams setting up (although they seemed to have it under control). Once most of the stands were filled, a few brave members (myself not included) walked around and mingled with the other teams, getting to know them and their robots. This is while most of us congregated around our home stand, fielding questions from equally brave members of other teams and curious Intuitive Surgical employees.
David Giandomenico, Shikhar Jagadeesh, and Ria Pradeep present a team photo and photojournal to an employee of Intuitive Surgical.
A practice run and some more waiting aside, the matches were finally about to begin. A modified version of the year’s game, individual teams would be scored based on the defenses breached and the goals made within a timeframe of 2 minutes, and whether or not their robot could hang on the tower at the end of the round. The low bar, the rock wall, and the rough terrain were worth two points, the cheval de frise was five points, and the sally port was valued at seven points, although the latter was sad at being forever alone. Nothing changed for the other methods to score points: The low and high goals and the hanging part were still worth two, five, and 15 points, respectively. Three robots played simultaneously, and oh, there was no such thing as an autonomous period there.
Monkey Python shamelessly frolics through the cheval de frise, earning a respectable 5 points.
With the scoring aspect out of the way, let’s talk strategy. Once the highly enthusiastic play-by-play announcer guy sounded off the match with mouth sounds, the drive team would pick up a boulder, cross the cheval de frise, get up to the tower, and score a high goal. Once that was done, the robot would return to the other side of the field (where most, if not all, of the boulders were located) through the rock wall and pick up another boulder. After this strategy was rinsed, washed, and repeated, we would be able to score ten points per trip between the first and second halves of the field. That was the plan, anyway.
Perfect timing as Monkey Python fires a boulder into the high goal, coming away with another 5 points.
As luck would have it, we were one of the first three teams to go. While we did earn 12 points in that first match, the most points compared to the other two teams, we were unable to earn more, due to our shooter acting up mid-round and firing shots too high all of a sudden. Come round two, we only managed to get off a shot or two before an e-clip and a washer got fed up with us and decided to bail off of the shooter head, disabling it for the remainder of the match; we ended with an iffy seven points. Luckily, co-president Shikhar Jagadeesh keeps a washer in his wallet at all times (don’t ask why); however, we were still faced with a missing e-clip. Other teams didn’t have the size that we were looking for, so we were forced to settle on a sketchy wire substitution that held up surprisingly well. We finished strong in our third and final match of the day, coming in with 25 points and no serious setbacks other than the recurring, annoying issue of the boulder being shot too high. We would have played in a fourth round, but we only had three batteries, with each battery being able to sustain one match before coming to slow, shuddering halt. This gave us a grand total of 44 points, enough to put us in third place.
Shikhar Jagadeesh, Ria Pradeep, and Elton Chang work in tandem to control Monkey Python during a match.
Armed with a sense of accomplishment, sore feet, and a list of issues to fix on our robot, we enjoyed lunch, packed the truck, and went on our way. We were perfectly content as to have lost the competition, as it was the social aspect—observing other robots, talking to other teams, having a good time—that mattered. The only loser out of all of this was the cheval de frise, which had a terrible time being ripped apart every round by robots.
Basically, it was fun. Just not for the cheval de frise that arrived back in our workshop a tattered wreck.
