FW: Steven's Botball Team takes 1st Place in Tournament!

My sister's son exemplifies teamworks and innovation, go Steven!

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Hi all,

Steven’s Botball Team had a GREAT day yesterday at the Northern California Botball Robot Tournament!  Steven was the main programmer for the small robot that the team constructed.  His team, the Los Altos Community Team, is made up of 9 students from 6^th grade to 12^th grade.   

The first seeding round (where the robots run on the playing field without an opponent) was very disappointing when the small robot didn’t even get out of the starting area and the large robot (built on top of the Roomba vacuum without the vacuuming parts) had problems running.  It turned out that one of the two power switches on the small robot hadn’t been turned on.  It wasn’t clear why the large robot failed to run its program.  The 2^nd seeding round was much better:  the small robot ran it’s program perfectly and the large robot ran better, but still missed some tasks.  The 3^rd seeding round was their highest scoring round. 

Some of the other teams had robots that failed to start, completed very few of the tasks, and fell off of the playing field, while the robots that did run completed less tasks than the Los Altos team.  At the end of the three seeding rounds, the Los Altos team had the highest seeding score which meant that they didn’t have to play as many games in the double elimination portion of the tournament.

The team members from left to right in the team photo are:  Kevin, Steven M., Kyle, Steven K., Travis, Parker, and Brian.  Not in the photo because they had to leave before the awards ceremony are Jeremy and Alex.

The Los Altos Community Team is basking in the success of their win since their hard work paid off!  They received four 1^st Place Awards:

            1^st Place Seeding

            1^st Place Double Elimination

            1^st Place Judges Choice Overall for Design/Engineering, Performance, Teamwork, and Sportsmanship

            1^st Place Overall (Seeding scores + Double Elimination scores + documentation scores)

The team is considering attending the Botball International Tournament this July in Oklahoma.  If they decide to go, they’ll have time to improve their code and plan other strategies.

- Ruth & Garry