Call it a success!

I have been diligently working on the robot as of late and have had absolutely no time to blog. I didn’t do a single piece of class work last week so I could have time to complete the robot before the competition. The Trinity College Fire Fighting Home Robot Contest was held this weekend, April 9th and 10th, at Trinity College in Hartford, CT. Friday night, Kathryn and I traveled with our advisors to Hartford, and officially met for the first time. Saturday was spent practicing for the competition. We were allowed to practice in the actual competition space. We were worried that our IR distance sensors would malfunction when near the fluorescent lights of the gym, but they worked perfectly.
However, everyone was trying to use the three arenas that were available, so it was hard to get a turn in the actual space.
Sunday was the actual competition. We ran our first run, and were so close to putting out the flame. The reflection from the candle off the wall behind it made our sensors find the candle too soon. Our robot tried to put the candle out while it was too far away.
For our second run, we changed our code so that the robot kept getting closer even when the fan was running. This proved to work, because we put the flame out in our second run! This meant we got a third chance.
In our third run, the worst thing happened. They put the candle in the floating room, the only room to which we couldn’t make it. The time ran out and we were still making our way around the arena.
So, we ended up getting 15th out of the 41 robots in the Senior Division. We are extremely happy with this, seeing as the majority of the robots did not put out the candle.
Pictures and more details will follow soon.