Naomi has really leaned into her Mecha-tronics major this year. And a fun part of that has been joining a robotics club. And the really fun part of that is traveling for a competition!
She was selected to join the all girl WIRED team for the VEX Robotics competition in Houston this past weekend. Her job: Pit Crew!
Each match is basically a skills competition to see which team's robots can pick up and place the most balls in the scoring areas. There's an autonomous period (when the robot operates on it's own) followed by a driver controlled period.
Funny: The girls of WIRED all somehow overlooked the autonomous requirement! But thanks to a late night coding session on Friday, they did indeed have a self controlled robot by the start of competition on Saturday morning. Although, not a completely debugged one...
According to Naomi, their robot didn't do much the first couple matches. But the 15 minute breaks between each match were furious! The coders were debugging like mad while Naomi and the Pit Crew frantically tightened screws, cooled motors, and reassembled anything that had come loose. And as the day went on, the WIRED robot got better and better. Teamwork!
The final qualification match was a rematch against WHOOP8, a team they'd lost to earlier in the day. But this time, the improved WIRED bot dominated!
In the end, they won about half of their 7 matches before getting destroyed by the #1 team in their bracket. But they didn't go home empty handed. More than a participation trophy, WIRED took home the Sportsmanship Award for providing assistance to other teams throughout the day.
Outside the competition, Naomi roomed with Alyssa & Mary, a midnight Sonic run was made, and adventures were had. +1 level up on LIFE 👍
Engineering fun.
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