A quiet week and busy weekend

A quiet week...

On the way out of town one day, I was happy to notice the steeple had been replaced on the quaint little chapel. It was ripped off by the tornado a few months back.



The winter's supply of wood is down to one neat stack.

Spring is nigh!

One last repair session Tuesday and the minibot was ready for the big weekend. However, Mike was not in the best shape with the beginnings of a sore throat.

A busy weekend...

Mike's been at Purdue since Thursday for the Boilermaker Regional FIRST Robotics competition. By the end of one day in the loud noisy pit, he was voiceless.

Most of time between matches he was in the pit area, their work cubicle, helping to keep Pivot, the robot, in working order.

1720 was a very efficient model. Almost every time it could do what it was supposed to during the initial 15" autonomous period--hold the Ubertube (yellow plastic inflated circle), extend its arm fully upward, move forward and place the game piece on the highest peg. During the two minute driver controlled period, it could move quickly, pick up and hang the other game pieces, play defense. And at the end, for high bonus points, it could deploy its minibot (small independent robot on the right) which would then climb a pole and set off a sensor light. Amazing really.

Our Baby Bot is at the top!

However, everything that could go wrong went wrong, and then some. There were matches when the arm would not extend, or the minibot would fall off, or Pivot stalled and could not move, and once for lack of a connector to the controls, it just sat through the entire match.  Add a few operator errors as well.

So, did we lose? NO, we ranked 13 out of 41. The other two teams on the differrent alliances pulled us through most of the rough times, and in the end we were picked to play in the finals!!!

Coach, drivers, human player and Pivot before final match.

 We didn't win but neither did we feel like losers.

There was a little robot that could not score at all. It had no arms and no minibot. It could only play defense. The name: NOT Your Average Rookie! We laughed at the little black box running around until we heard its story from the team sitting next to us.
That new innercity team was working to keep kids off the streets and out of gangs. Their robot hadn't come together and one of their members had been stabbed. They were about to give up but at the last minute he showed up so they came anyway without a working robot. Another team helped them put together a simple model in just one day! And they ended up on an alliance in the semifinals!

As for me, I drove to Lafayette on Friday and stayed overnight. The 70+ miles of straight road brought back memories of the ten years I commuted to Purdue, already more than ten years ago.

One of the many special moments for me was the conversation with the other Mrs. Koch (no relation). Two of their sons have been through the program and this is the last year.

Now it's good to be home again.