Risin' up, back on the street;
Did my time, took my chances.
Went the distance, now I'm back on my feet-
Just a man and his will to survive.

Thursday was the culmination of a Quarter's worth of anticipation, inspiration, and perspiration. That's right boys a girls: Thursday was the FEH (Fundamentals of Engineering for Honors) Robot Final Competition.

For those just tuning in, some background: this Spring Quarter I've been taking a class called Engineering H193. The focus of this class is to design, build, test, modify, and (hopefully) perfect an autonomous robot that can perform several tasks on an obstacle course. This year's course simulated a mine, with our robot having to drop off dynamite, hit a detonator, traverse a debris ramp, collect a GEM, deposit it, and lift a retaining wall before finally returning to start. Recall that all this must be done autonomously.

This class represents the intersection of professional writing, designing, drafting, building, wiring, programming, and a number of other engineering skills. Basically, it's a beast.

After countless hours building this thing, it all came together for the Final Competition. How'd it go?

It actually went pretty terrible.

In the Prelims of the day, our robot was super inconsistent. We were fixing problems all day, only to have some bad luck cause a new error to erupt in the Final Competition. Not so good.

But I'm still happy.

I've learned so much this Quarter. There are so many mechanical, hands-on techniques like soldering sensors and working with PVC and assembling drive trains with DC motors. There are also a million programming things to deal with, like creating functions, commenting code, debugging, and much more. Finally, there's documentation involved like creating professional reports, budgets, timetables, inventory, assembly drawings, and on and on.

Sure, DARIA didn't do so well on the big day. But she's taught me so much, it's hard to be mad for too long. And to be fair, she did have a perfect run in practice, so we know she had it in her somewhere.

We made some mistakes, but we also had some incredible breakthroughs. It was heart-breaking, terrible, time-consuming, frustrating, and exhausting. It was educational, fun, exciting, challenging, terrific, and helped us accomplish more than any of us thought possible.

Not bad, DARIA. Not bad at all.

Take care,

Rob

One of the competition courses. Check out the live camera and computer display on the big screens to keep the audience updates of robots' progress!

A peek behind the screens... This is the pit area for programming, diagnostics, charging, fixing, etc.

My team takes a moment to appreciate our baby

My girl. DARIA.