The University of Akron’s computer science club has been invited to compete at Case’s Engineers Week in the Lego robot competition. They normally compete against high school kids, but in 2006, they have invited the local area colleges to come in and compete as well. Trick is Case has Lego kits. Each team gets the same exact kit and has to build a robot which searches for a light source. Once found, it must go to the light source to score a point. Two robots go at it at a time. Another trick is we don’t have ANY of the robot gear Case has. All our testing and development will be based on wild guessing. Later on, we’ll get a couple hours to play with the equipment and then we’ll build on the day of the event. Oh yeah, the gear they’re using had cost $800 back in the day. Today, you can’t get it and what you can get costs $400. Its cool stuff, but out of all of our budgets.

After talking with a friend of mine who graduated from Case, I’m thinking we don’t stand much of a chance. They’ve been doing the robot thing on some level for probably at least a decade. Akron? I think they JUST started offering a robot course not too long ago.

The cool part is I think I have some tools for figuring out the light sensing (anyone remember back when I had wired up my apartment?). We need to be able to measure light, identify the location of the light and instruct hardware to move towards it. Doesn’t sound too bad, but the arena will not be perfectly dark and we have to be able to lock onto an 80 watt and 20 watt bulb (if I’m remembering correctly).