It’s been exactly one month since RoboCup 2017 began, so now is as good a time as any to share the experiences we had.
We arrived at the Takeda Teva Ocean Arena early on Wednesday the 26th at 8 AM. With RoboCup yet to officially start, the venue was only open for teams to set up and practice.
We found our assigned table at a convenient location right next to the mazes and the projector. With relief, we set down all our heavy equipment (control panel, I’m looking at you!) and set up our table with power boards, 240 volt transformers, cables and adapters.
Above: Dumping our bags with relief after we find our table on the first day. Taken on the 26/07/2017 at 8:16 AM.
Above: The first task was to get a team photograph! Left to Right: Aaron, Riley, Matthew, Jack. In the robot’s view is Mr Stock and Mr Pham, taking the photo. Ryan was not present at this stage as he was sick and still at the hotel. Taken on the 26/07/2017 at 9:33 AM.
After taking care of the important administrative tasks (such as locating the nearest vending machines to make sure they had the “Nagoya Special” sparkling apple drink “Vivits” (they didn’t) and helping set up the terrain mazes), we were able to use the existing terrains to test the robot’s performance using both our belt design and our beltless design. While the belt helped immensely in certain terrains such as Stepfield (where the belt would prevent the robot from getting beached az on the middle blocks), we eventually opted for our beltless design with plasti-dipped wheels, offering more grip.
Above: Testing the performance of belts vs no belts on each type of terrain. Taken 26/07/2017 at 10:06 AM.
It was around this time that other teams started arriving. We cracked open our bags of kangaroo and koala keychains to give everyone a welcoming gift. We were also excited to receive some gifts in return, including a hanging sombrero decoration from the Mexican team and a selection of folding hand fans from the Japanese team.
Above: Sharing robot designs and exchanging gifts while meeting teams from USA and Mexico. Taken on the 26/07/2017 at 11:10 AM.
Ryan arrived at 12:30 PM to help with coding while we configured our final robot design.
Above: Working hard on the final design modifications before the official practice runs the next day. Taken on the 26/07/2017 at 12:55 PM.
Confident in our plans, we left the Ocean Arena at 6 PM after a full 10 hour day.