Robotics

The culmination of the year-long work done by students in the robotics track is the IT-Olympics robotics competition. As with the other venues, there are three components on which a team is judged: community service; the primary competition; the real-time competition.

This venue allows a team of three to ten students an opportunity to apply their knowledge about robotics in Lego Mindstorms NXT Sumo competition, as well as in the real-time events. A team will bring their Sumo robot, their primary challenge, to the event. They can also bring a laptop computer if they have been using the Lego Mindstorms NXT software on it, however, all teams are provided a machine that has Windows XP and the Lego software on it to use during the competition.

Student teams are allowed physical access to Hilton at 10 a.m. on the first day of the competition at which time they may finish any configuration or installation necessary. The opening ceremonies will be at noon and competition begins after that.

Some selected rules of the Robotics Venue include:

• The robots must be built using only the components sent to the IT-Adventures club and must come from kits 979797 and/or 979648. No other components are allowed to be purchased and added in.
• The robot cannot exceed two pounds and must fit in a 1’ x 1’ frame.
• Documentation about design choice for the sumo robot must be included for judging. This should include pictures.
• Code for the program running during the competition should be documented and
  easily readible by the judges.

The teams will be scored in the primary competiton on mechanical design, results of their bouts, code, code documentation and design documentation.

During the two-day event, students are continuously given new robotics challenges which they must solve. These are called real-time challenges. They are given a time slot in which to complete the task before the next real-time challenge is presented to them. Each real-time challenge is judged and contributes to their overall score.

Details of the robotics competition are found in the 2010 IT-Olympics Venue Document which will be available January 2010.

As stated in the venue document, each team must complete a multimedia presentation that is judged during the IT-Olympics which demonstrates their community service project completed prior the the IT-Olympics. The points earned on the community service project contribute to the overall robotics scores.