Question 1: What was the general strategy or plan behind your bot design?

We were hoping that it would push the other robot off of the ring, of course. The robot first would run to the edge, then turn broadside to the ring, where a touch sensor would wait to detect the enemy. Then the robot would rotate in place and hopefully push the other robot off the edge with its arm.

Question 2: What technologies/mechanisms did you use?

It was an RIS-only robot, so we didn't have many options. Especially as it was our first robot, we were forced to be conservative. To that end, we mainly stuck with tried-and-true things, rather than more exotic mechanisms.

Question 3: What was the most challenging aspect of construction?

Making the robot as heavy as possible. Probably the opposite of everybody else, who had trouble staying within 2 pounds! Without the extra weight, it didn't have enough traction to push other bots.

Question 4: Are there any special features you care to talk about?

Not in particular. It was a pretty simple robot.

Question 5: What surprised you about how your bot behaved/performed during the event?

Well, we were pretty suprised when our robot drove itself right out of the ring for the first two bouts! The light sensor worked very differently at the event than it did at home. It was not seeing white as a very bright signal. More like 30 instead of 50. That wasn't bright enough to trigger the software.

Actually, we made changes to the robot between each and every round. Some were software (to stop it from driving out of the ring when it avoided contact for a long time), most were hardware (changing wheels and moving the light sensor). The concept, however, seemed to work as we expected it to, when some other unrelated problem did not end the match early!