Today was the first of 10 planned scrimmages in Auckland this season. We started the season with a strong turnout, with 29 teams attending at Unitec in Albany.
The robots were impressive. Every robot managed to at least play the game effectively, and there were some high scoring autonomous routines as well as scores of 130 or more from some alliances. All four teams in thefinals were from House of Science and Roarbotics (Mount Albert Grammar School). The first seeded alliance of 8757B and 2908X played against the second seeded 8757 and 2908B, with the first seed taking the win.
Rules issues needed to be clarified a bit more than at most events, which is usual for the first scrimmage of a season. To remind everyone: your robot is not allowed inside a low goal or your opponents’ loading zone. In the last 30 seconds it is also not allowed in their climbing zone (this is the out of bounds rule that teams are most likely to break).
When match loading robots, drive team members need to make sure they are placing objects gently onto the robot or the tile, which means not shoving or throwing them in. People who haven’t started your seasons yet, I think you’ll enjoy Nothing but Net :). It’s an exciting game, and building impressive launchers isn’t as intimidating as it looks.
Congratulations to M.A.G.S and House of Science for the well deserved win today! There were many outstanding robots and it was great to see. I am glad everyone was wearing safety glasses because we had balls fly into the spectators!
Hopefully we will make the next scrimmage in two weeks
Today was the second of the Auckland Nothing but Net Scrimmages for the Auckland region. I don’t think Oliver mentioned that all Auckland scrimmages this year are being put up Unitec, so thank you to them for once again providing an awesome venue. It was also good to see the return of aMess (new team name is M.A.R.T.I.) to the realm of scrimmages. We also saw the return of a couple top teams that didn’t compete at the first scrimmage.
With 35 teams competing it wasn’t a small scrimmage and once again we got to see some interesting design to try combat the challenges of this game. There were an array of shooting lengths, some teams favouring long distance, others preferring short distance and a couple somewhere in between.
After the qualification round, three teams remained undefeated. These were (in order) 7682E (Wingus & Dingus), 2915A (Lynfield College) and 2904B (Lakebots). With an alliance between the first and second seed, these teams won the scrimmage without losing a single match. Finalists were teams 2908V (Mt Albert Grammar) and 2915C (Lynfield College) Congratulations to Wingus & Dingus and Lynfield College. Their alliance also got the Highest Match Score so far (that we know of) with 273 points scored in Quarter Final 1. In Finals Match 2 they also got a 269. Unfortunately since the event isn’t on RobotEvents these aren’t official scores, but I would love to see someone beat them. Highest combined match score was** 391** in Finals 2. I will see if I can get a photo posted of the nets. EDIT: Picture
Yes the field is empty. There was one ball left on the field at the end of the match.
As of right now scores are not posted publicly anywhere, however I know Nathan from VexDB is working on something, so they should be up within a month.
Thank you to all the competitors, teachers, mentors. Volunteers from AURA, M.A.R.T.I. and to the guys from Unitec who look after the venue.
Generally we don’t post any footage from scrimmages. However, it is up a team to reveal a robot and this may include match footage. For the time being you’ll just have to wait for the first team to reveal.
We were pretty happy our robot worked (well, the important features worked anyway… ), it was a bit last minute getting it finished - hopefully we won’t be up till midnight the night before next time
Wingus and Dingus, you guys were amazing as always - cant wait to see what more you come out with
The finals games were pretty awesome, you guys were great competition and I think this season is going to be really exciting.
A big thanks to Kiwibots, Unitec for hosting the competition and all the volunteers.
I think Ethan is keen to do a reveal soon. It is literally just a catapult with rubber bands and some motors pulling it back. No issues with snapping rubber bands. That video clip was from his initial feasibility experiments. Different approach than flywheels and pinball machines but actually quite effective.
Today was Scrimmage Three for the Auckland region. Once again hosted by Unitec on their Albany Campus.
It was the biggest turnout so far in the season with 42 teams competing. There are still many different shooting and firing designs being used and none are really showing to be ‘the best.’ We saw the first robot successfully fire from three different distance reliably. While other designs are still favouring a single shooting position or two. Accuracy and reliability, as expected are key to success. Some matches the short range shooters made the difference because both long range shooters were about equal. Strong defence was also seen during the semi-finals.
Since there were only five qualification matches we had six teams undefeated by the time eliminations came around.** House of Science** (8757) picked Wingus & Dingus (7682), while Wingus & Dingus E (7682E) picked House of Science B (8757B). These teams eventually met in the finals after a long four match (R-B-T-R) Semi-Final between W&DE/HoSB with a Lynfield College alliance of 2915A and 2915C. Much defense. Wow. HoSA and W&DA won the day. They also claimed the highest alliance score of the day with 264 points. Congratulations to them. The highest combined match score of the day was 398 points in Final 2.
We ran a couple of skills challenges as well. Wingus & Dingus claiming both robot and drivers skills with scores of 157 and 155.
As I said last time, the scores are not posted publicly anywhere right now, but we are working on getting them up.
Thank you to all the competitors, teachers, mentors. Volunteers from AURA and to the guys from Unitec who look after the venue. Shout out to the security for helping us field flying balls.
I also want to mention here that Kiwibots were awarded the Eric & Kathy Hertz Award for Citizen Diplomacy during the week at the prestigious AmCham-DHL Express Success & Innovation Awards. The award recognises how Kiwibots has made significant contributions to strengthening the bonds between the people of Aotearoa and the United States.
Semi finals between 7682E+8757B and 2915A+2915C were such an epic battle - awesome driving all round teams. When you’re up against Lynfield you know it isn’t going to be easy!
Thanks to the usual suspects who volunteer at our Auckland event. Always appreciated.
Finals matches were a great spectacle with both Wingus & Dingus and House of Science teams putting on an awesome show. Here’s match footage of finals 2 where they score 398 combined. Sorry HoS teams didn’t want their robots revealed so they’ve been blurred out somewhat.
Guess this is a good time to reveal that both 7682 teams are using catapults for ball launching. Enjoy
That’s a very interesting design, I’m curious as to how you release the arm to fire the ball. If you want to keep it a secret it’s fine it’s just I have seen multiple ways of doing it and I was wondering what you guys were using.
Not official but it appears that the catapult is actually just geared to the motors. The speed it pulls the catapult back is actually always quick while the launching varies speed. This means that the arm isn’t charging/storing energy but just resetting the arm into the correct location.
Both motors and elastics are used for catapulting. The motors are directly coupled to the catapult arm so there’s no release mechanism aside from the motors themselves.
For long range shooting the elastics + motor power provide enough energy to propel a ball into the high-goal.
As for short range, the motors are run at a lower power which essentially acts as a brake for the elastics. Otherwise too much energy would be imparted to the ball.
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