Come and have some fun!!!
This monday Free Range Robotics were on TV ONE live!
Click here to watch the recording.
Free Range Robotics receiving the world title in programming skills. From left to right Richard Paul, Kane Ross, Michael Lawton, Isaac Harrold, Ethan Harrold, Mark Lawton, Rhiannon Waller, Terry Allen, Patrick Walmsley, John Waller, Max Waller
Auckland Homeschool Team Free Range Robotics took away two awards at the 2009 Vex Robotics World Championships held 30th April - 2nd May in Dallas, Texas.
They won the World Championship title for Programming Skills where they had to design and programme a robot to navigate over a field and score goals in a one minute period without any human intervention.
We had a gripping final day of competition, then straight to the event dinner function. We arrived back at our hotel at 11:30pm and had to pack up the robots, and all the tools etc, and our own stuff, grab a couple of hours sleep and up again at 4am to start travels home. So I haven't had a moment to send an update.
The final day started early, as usual: In the team pit, sorting jobs for the day, getting the robot loaded up with programmes, and especial attention to scouting for potential alliance partners. We won our games and stayed at the top of our tournament division for the qualifying rounds. This meant we had literally 10 minutes to come together and discuss who out of the other 139 teams we should invite to join us in the finals matches. That was really tough - because we had had only 3 scouts to go out and watch games.
Today was a very exciting day! Each team has only 6 qualifying matches to get a chance to be in the quarter finals.
We won all five of our matches today, and we have one more tomorrow. Even more exciting is that Free Range Robotics the Home school team, are coming first on the placing board! This is out of a draw of 140 teams. The other 140 teams that are here in Dallas are playing off each other in a parallel tournament to ours, and the champion team of each division gets to play in the Grand Final. It looks like we have a good chance at the title!
Match one score was, 36 to 30, we had NO alliance partner, as they did not show up at all! So we played against 2 opposing robots on our own. And won!
Match two, 46 to 19, we also had no alliance partner again (their robot was disqualified for being over size just as we set up on the field) but we managed to win convincingly.
Match three 37 to 24.
Match four, 40 to 36.
Match five, 44 to 21
We have our last qualifying match tomorrow which will be followed by the finals in the afternoon.