Student "edition" found at {csi dot journalspace dot com}.

Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

In the second meeting of my Introduction to Robotics classes for the eighth week of the third term, this was when they found out (because I told them – or more accurately, wrote it on the board) that the deadline for their maze solving robot had been moved once more, for another week.

At the same time the public announcements of the competition, and of their next two projects, was also posted in the halls of the schools just to emphasize to them that after this there would be no more extensions, and that they had more than enough preparation for their next projects since it was told to them this early.

In fact, some of the members of at least two groups are already thinking ahead to the stair ascending and descending robot, practicing at the special stairs made with black stripes painted into the edges for possible light sensor detection while the others were still doing the finishing touches on the maze robot.

One group, going back to discussing the maze robot, complained about how slippery the track floor was, and they tried putting masking tape on the wheels of their robot, which I said was not allowed. They could only use materials found in their kits.

I told them that the submission of their CD is moved to the day after the public competition, so that they could have time to record their robot in public and place that in their CD.

But the robot has to be submitted the day before the competition, with freshly charged (or new) batteries already, and they won’t see their robot until the next day. This is to prevent last minute changes that were prevalent in last year’s competitions that were just held in the lab, where the computers were accessible.

But I allowed the students to include in their CDs video recording of the robot in action while still in the lab, in case there is an “attack of performance nervousness” and the techniques that succeeds while in the lab would fail at the competition itself.

I also asked for printouts of their posters (also photocopied) so that the rest of the student population can have a preview of the competing robots before the competition day itself, like those new TV shows or movies where each character is given their own banner or billboard.

Session 1023 lost traction. Class dismissed.