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Fun at RoboGames 2006
 
(formerly ROBOlympics)
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We had a wonderful time at this year's RoboGames in San Francisco! It was a lot of hard work for some of us, but it was great to meet so many new people and all share ideas.

(Rooks' Pawn ended up taking a silver in Robo-One Wrestling. The Gold he's holding is from the soccer tournament.)

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Along with Dan Albert, we took up the task of creating the international soccer teams entirely made from eight  Robonova-1's. We planned on having full  four-on-four action, but due to some minor control complications with one of the bots, we ended up having a three-on-three event. Regardless, it turned out to be a huge success among the onlookers.

(our soccer-bots in action - team Brazil vs. team USA)

Dan brilliantly designed a programmable break-out board for the XBee. We placed one inside the slightly modified RN-1 head, and the other in his modified Play Station controllers. We wrote some control handling code, soccer routines, threw in a couple of gyros, and we were set. I must admit that with everything going on, the soccer routines (as well as Rook's Pawn's) could have been much better, but it turned out to be a lot of fun none the less... and that's most important.
(five of the eight - ready to get down to business)

Dan Albert, David Culkins, and I made up ComBots Team USA and took the gold against the UK (silver), Brazilian (bronze) and Columbian teams. We all used the same two sets of three RN-1 players to compete, and simply changed their cute little jerseys to differentiate between the countries. The games were slow-paced, but ultimately, everyone had a great time. Only in Robo-soccer could the Americans do this well

I know Dan is in the process of making the break-out boards available for purchase soon, so keep a look out on the robosavv forum. They work great and are very easy to implement into the RN-1.
 

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(RoboGames 2006 Competitors and robots... most of us anyway)

MORE COMING SOON!

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