New this year at the Trinity College Firefighting Home Robot Contest will be a Checkout Table, where teams can verify that their robot meets some initial specifications (Section 2.5 of The Rules). The overall size should be the easiest spec to check; I just glued up a pair of suitable Bounding Boxes:
Robowaiter robots must fit in the smaller cube, which is 30 cm on a side. Firefighting robots must fit in the larger box, with wheeled / treaded robots inside the 31 x 31 x 27 cm outline and walkers within the larger 46 x 31 x 27 volume.
Next step: fluorescent orange paint over a white shot coat to kill the lettering.
And I didn’t even give myself a hot glue burn…
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
Comments
10 responses to “Trinity College Robot Contest: Bounding Boxes”
First Robotics competition is happening this weekend too and Makelab Charleston is helping out. Always glad to see events like this where we can give back to the community and garner greater interest in science. Maybe keep a handfull of kids out of a future “occupy” demonstration and possibly help bring innovation and manufacturing back to the US!
If companies weren’t simultaneously laying off US engineers, complaining they can’t find engineers, and hiring engineers in India I’d be less cynical about the whole situation. It’s hard to encourage kids to bust their crank learning engineering when they can read the headlines and decode the situation.
We need techies, but companies sure aren’t doing themselves any favors…
Oh, they’re doing themselves a bottom-line favor. The question is: what reason is there for those companies to exist, after outsourcing manufacturing, engineering, and managing?
“Nokia Siemens Bangalore centre inaugurated”
http://www.thehindu.com/business/article102266.ece
Mr. Vanhanen committed political suicide.
That, combined with not getting Angry Birds for Windows Phone, may be the kiss of death…
CEO bonuses? [sigh]
“William D. Cohan (House of Cards) and John Gillespie (Money for Nothing) ”
http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/2475
It’d take less time than that to read the book…
Sorry, wasn’t trying to start a war. Just saying I’d rather see more interest in science and encourage others to support such events.
We’re in violent agreement, even if I have the sinking suspicion the CEOs won’t see the new crop of US engineers as any more valuable than the last…