I have a friend who is one of the advisors for the Sault Sainte Marie High School Robotics Club.
Their first competition of the year is in Escanaba, Michigan this weekend. Yes, there really is a city in Michigan named Escanaba. The project my friend described sounded like luggage that could lift itself up into an overhead storage unit.
Schools from the following northern Michigan towns are competing:
| Houghton, Michigan |
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| Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan | ||||||
| Calumet, Michigan | ||||||
| Escanaba, Michigan | ||||||
| Ishpeming, Michigan | ||||||
| Gladstone, Michigan | ||||||
| Brimley, Michigan | ||||||
| Cooks, Michigan | ||||||
| Negaunee, Michigan | ||||||
| Manistique, Michigan | ||||||
| Cedarville, Michigan | ||||||
| Gaylord, Michigan | ||||||
| Essexville, Michigan | ||||||
| Alpena , Michigan | ||||||
| Pellston, Michigan | ||||||
| Lake Linden, Michigan | ||||||
| Alpena, Michigan | ||||||
| Hale, Michigan | ||||||
| Wilson, Michigan | ||||||
| Sfontinalis, Michigan | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Newberry, Michigan | ||||||
| Rudyard, Michigan | ||||||
| Brimley, Michigan | ||||||
| Mackinac Island, Michigan | ||||||
| Powers, Michigan | ||||||
| Stephenson, Michigan | ||||||
| Munising, Michigan | ||||||
| Watersmeet, Michigan | ||||||
| Lanse, Michigan | ||||||
| Ontonagon, Michigan | ||||||
| Carney, Michigan | ||||||
| Kingsford, Michigan | ||||||
| Norway, Michigan | ||||||
| Atlanta, Michigan | ||||||
| Rock, Michigan | ||||||
| Rogers City, Michigan | ||||||
| Marquette, Michigan | ||||||
| Gladstone, Michigan | ||||||
| Essexville, Michigan |
Interesting Joe. Robotics is one of those things that seems endlessly fascinating to me, but I am a little long in the tooth at this point. What do they do in the competition (the website did not seem to list events)?
ReplyDeleteThe task varies from year-to-year.
DeleteIn many cases, the robot must have self-contained power and navigate like a Roomba. One year it had to "find" a bin, spear a part through a hole and then off-load the part to a rack.
Since these are high-school kids and these were considered VERY high-end programming tasks 20 years ago, I believe that "vision" modules are supplied. That is, activate the module, sweep the part with the camera and internal logic much like "face recognition" in digital cameras finds holes (which visually are not much different than faces). Then the algorithm interacts directly with the servos to drive the pin to the proper hole.
Nice to see the field includes some "troll" schools in the competition, too. I would've thought it would have been all U.P. schools.
ReplyDeleteSearch FIRST Robotics on YouTube to see examples of competitions. Add a year to see the different tasks each year. Contests were cut short in 2020 and held "virtually" in 21 so it is good they are back.
ReplyDelete