Wow
What an event this Pi Wars is, being inspiring for all participants.
On Saturday we saw many young people transforming from being anxious in the morning into happy, shining people in the afternoon. And on Sunday this repeated with different, a bit older, people.
So much interaction between all contestants interested in each other’s creations and everybody willing to share and help others out.
Many thanks to Mike, Tim and Dave for organizing such a super friendly event with an amazing relaxed atmosphere during the whole weekend.
Of course we also need to thank all other volunteers and sponsors who make this event possible.
Time to put the robot where the challenge is…
Below are the videos of all our challenges. Challenge definitions can be found via https://piwars.org/2024-disaster-zone/challenges/.
Technical (11th) & Artistic Merit (15th) & Most Disastrous (11th)
For these three challenges, we needed to submit a video before the event, to give the judges time to view and score these.
The Temple of Doom (not ranked)
We started with The Temple of Doom being many great and fun challenges in one.
Here it really showed we didn’t spend enough time practicing driving the robot…
As one of our supporters summed it up: What a drama
Pi Noon (not ranked)
The video says it all.
Minesweeper (Autonomous 5th)
The first autonomous challenge for the day for us. It was great to see the strategy we defined (see: https://dutch-rescue-team.blogspot.com/2024/04/story-strike-pose.html), coming to live. We ‘reused’ our Eco Disaster extension to ensure covering 4 tiles at once.
The Zombie Apocalypse (Remote Control 4th)
In the preparation room we checked if our laser cross was still pointing in the right direction and already discovered that we needed to turn off the lights to be able to see the laser cross.
During testing a week before we left for the competition we’d became aware of this possible issue, but decided to take the chance. However, at the actual course, the vertical line of the laser cross could be seen, but the horizontal line was completely invisible. Luckily we managed to get a few hits.
Lava Palava (Autonomous 1st)
With our extension for the required balance to take on the sleeping policeman and our camera with OpenCV, we were able to have three smooth runs.
Eco Disaster (Autonomous 2nd)
Our personal pinnacle. Lots of work has gone into polishing this challenge.
Escape Route (Autonomous shared 2nd)
Before the robot starts moving, it knows exactly the route to take, because the configuration and start pose is known. From the picture taken by our camera, the colors of the first two blocks are determined and the position of our robot compared to the first block.
Blogging (4th)
We hope this blog may inspire others to get interested in robotics and maybe even to participate in Pi Wars.
