Item Gathering - May 18, 2002

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Competitors Present: Heather, Josh, Jona, Rob, Steve

Spectators Present: Glenda, Greg, Jamie, Joe, Ralph, Seirre

For this event we modified the Maxwell's demons game by reducing the blocks from 2 colors to just 1 color, reducing the size of the "home base" to an 18 inch square for each color (black and white), and we added a sumo-bot element within the rules. These changes made for quite an array of ideas from the competitors and their bots. The robot designs ranged from a multi-bot system to a pure mechanical solution. Here is a bot by bot description:

	Infernal Contraption: A two unit team. The main unit was a moving platform geared to be strong and slow. It's purpose was to slowly traverse the length of the play field and end up sitting on top of the opponent's home base. Meanwhile the secondary unit, a small mite-like bot with two pincers, would locate and snatch blocks.
	Milk Money: Living up to it's name, this bot's strategy was to liberate the already gathered blocks of it's opponent and return them to it's own home base.
	Mine: Meant to stay close to home, this bot employed a single grabbing, lifting, holding and dumping mechanism to handle the blocks it located.
	Moo-Cow: This bot used dead reckoning and a simple corral structure to gather blocks.
	Sit-n-Spin: A purely mechanical solution, this bot was essentially a rotating arm that swept the blocks in it's path back towards it's axis.

Although we intended to have a double-elimination style tournament, with only 5 bots present we decided to go round robin instead. This way each bot would face all of the others.

The results of the round robin were as follows:

	Bots	Round 1	Round 2	Round 3	Winner
	Milk Money vs. Moo-cow	8 / -2	0 / -5	N/A	Milk Money
	Mine vs. Infernal Contraption	0 / 3	3 / 0	2 / -2	Mine
	Sit-n-Spin vs. Moo-Cow	10 / -3	5 / -5	N/A	Sit-n-Spin
	Milk Money vs. Infernal Contraption	-1 / -6	-3 / -10	N/A	Milk Money
	Infernal Contraption vs. Moo-Cow	-4 / -6	-5 / 5	-5 / -4	Moo-Cow
	Mine vs. Sit-n-Spin	0 / 12	0 / 11	N/A	Sit-n-Spin
	Milk Money vs. Sit-n-Spin	9 / 0	-7 / 3	7 / 0	Milk Money
	Mine vs. Moo-Cow	-1 / -4	0 / -9	N/A	Mine
	Infernal Contraption vs. Sit-n-Spin	-1 / 10	-12 / 1	N/A	Sit-n-Spin
	Milk Money vs. Mine	0 / -3	-1 / -4	N/A	Milk Money
Overall victor: Milk Money

One point was awarded for each block left on the bot's home base at the end of a round. One point was taken away for each block the bot knocked off the play field during the round. In some cases, the bot with the fewer negative points won the round!

Two trophies were given out at the end of the event. One went to Milk Money who won the round robin competition. The other went to Sit-n-Spin who was voted the "people's favorite". You can view the trophies here.

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