Atholton High School Botball 2008

My son's high school, Atholton High, competed in the Greater D.C. Regional Botball Robot Tournament on May 3, 2008, at Ritchie Coliseum (left photo) on the U. of Maryland College Park Campus. There were about 50 teams -- mostly from high schools in the region, but also a few from middle schools and clubs. The goal was to build two robots (or in a few cases only one) from a kit of parts that would autonomously knock some pieces off the table and move other pieces to the desired part of the table (right photo). There was a story about a solar flare endangering the space station, and the robot has two minutes to deploy (knock off the table) the satellites (blue cups) and solar sails (little paper umbrellas), move the crew (orange poms) to the orange square, and the plants (green poms) to the green square. The robot can also connect the two modules (tables) by setting up the pathways between them (knock down the hinged pieces of wood). Before the match, the students set up the robots in the proper position, and then had nothing to do during the match except possibly catch a robot falling off the table. Turning on two light bulbs signaled the start of the game. (As a result no flash photography was allowed, which led to rather long exposures of about 1/15th of a second for my photos.) There were three seeding rounds in which only one team was on a table, and then double elimination rounds in which two teams competed in a head-to-head match. The first Atholton team (with mostly seniors) had a series of problems and lost their first two elimination matches (left photo). The second team (with mostly juniors) only built one robot, but it would consistently deploy all the satellites and solar sails and move all the crew and plants on their side of the table to safety (right photo). They won their first two elimination matches. The right photo below shows the board at the end of the second match. Note that there are no cups left on their (right) side of the table, and all the poms have been moved to the squares. They eventually finished 6th.