Houston Day 4 National ROV competition

All the underwater competitions are finished and we are currently in 2nd place.

The first place team is a collection of high school and university students from Newfoundland, Canada. Their performance score is 65, ours is 52.

Monterey Bay College, CA is in third place with a score (we think) 40 points.

Here is how the rest of the scoring will go:

Each team sent in their technical report three weeks ago – a possible 25 points
Each team had to make a technical presentation – a possible 80 points.
Each team had to produce a poster display – a possible 15 points.

The underwater performance was worth up to 120 points. So our 52 points did not look too good yesterday, especially since we felt we very easily could have earned 100 points. We expected some one[-67 to do well!

The first, second and third overall teams are determined by the total points in all four categories. We will find out tonight at the awards ceremony who won.

A few observations:

A few people have congratulated us on the Wired article and the Newsline program, but most people, especially us, are not making a fuss about it. The kids were worried about it getting in the way.

I’m amazed how well the kids can work with only 4-6 hours of sleep a night. I bet when we get home, they will sleep for 24 hours straight.

MIT used fiber optics with an onboard battery like we do, but theirs was too fragile and was easily tangled. They became another ROV DNF (Did Not Finish)

In our FIRST robot competitions and the MATE competitions, we try to build robust, reliable machines. We don’t always reach that goal, but once again I’m surprised how often it pays off for us.

Houston is humid

A few minutes past midnight, all the kids came in our room to wish us a happy Father’s Day.

It’s time for a nap and then some serious pacing.

Fredi has posted new pictures at:
http://www.freewebs.com/matehouston/photosfromhouston.htm

I know he keeps changing sites, but we either keep exceeding size or traffic limits on the other sites.

Allan