Underpants On The Outside

This weekend was the robot competition.  The way the competition works: after a day and a half of seeding matches, the top eight teams pick their alliance, schoolyard style, and 24 of the 32 teams go on to the playoffs.  After the first day, it’s pretty clear who the top teams are, so the lower teams run around trying to look impressive.

When I showed up, I was given a quick briefing.  First off, the rollers never worked.  Not even a little.  Not even as ballast.  The shooter, in comparison, worked much better, in that it made good ballast.

There was still optimism.  As it turned out, our robot was terrific at driving around wildly, tripping up opposing robots and generally being a nuisance.  In other words, our robot had the functionality of a Labrador, and just like a Labrador, we were likable and popular.

Last year, we had a somewhat similar situation: a robot that did not exactly complete the mission but played great defense. We still made it to the finals.  How did we do it?

As Big Brother says, I may be dumb, but I ain’t stupid.  Wehad a team full of girls in a room full of trekkies, so I pimped those girls out.  There were phone numbers exchanged, bad jokes laughed at… these girls were naturals.  The teachers had objections, but they couldn’t argue with the results.  We got picked, and not only did we make the finals, we performed admirably in them.  I think the girls learned a valuable lesson.

This year, it was the teachers that were drinking from pimp cups.  We had more girls working the room than we had working on the robot, and any girl standing around idly was told to “go be friendly.”  One girl complained that her feet hurt and a geometry teacher backhanded her.  (kidding, kidding.)

Unfortunately, their efforts were for naught, because on the second day, the Labrador broke its hip.  The drive chain on one side skipped off the sprockets, and with only one side motorized, the robot couldn’t turn.  It could only make weird sounds as it went back and forth, back and forth.  It was sad to watch, and unlike a Labrador, my parents couldn’t take this robot to the vet and bring home a new, baby robot a few days later.  The team went unpicked; we packed up early and went home dejected. 

I want to say that the girls all put a lot of effort into this thing, and there is still an important lesson.  Sometimes, you pour your heart into something, and it just doesn’t work out.

…because you didn’t show enough leg.