International Autonomous Robot Racing Competition

* Geekalicious *
We now divert you from the regularly scheduled program of hole in the wall dining spots to a geeky event that was a lot of fun.
Finding the location was amusing. Only a competition like this would give these instructions to tell you how to find the competition, «You can view the location by entering the coordinates 49.268 046,-123.250 881 on Google Maps.»
That just made me chuckle. But the sad thing is that it worked! (Now the only question is how to enter that location onto Unilocal maps. Hm…)
The teams, which came from schools across Canada designed and built robotic vehicles that operate on their own without human guidance or control to go through twisting obstacle filled courses that are only marked with orange cones (Photos:
and
). The robots have to sense their environment and decide what to do to get through the course. Pretty amazing technology when you think about it, considering some of the teams did an amazing job at it. This is the stuff future automated cars is made of!
The robots seem to take on their own personality, including one that just always wanted to turn right whenever it reached an intersection — even when it was supposed to go straight. The whole crowd was cheering for it when somehow it finally went straight on its last attempt. It was amusing in a geeky way. And I admit — I enjoyed it!
This particular stoplight (Photo:
) was particularly challenging as the robots (you can see one of them in that photo) have to sense if the light is red or green and only proceed on a green. Amazing that they did in many cases.
The crowd was filled with spectators cheering on the various robots and teams, and it was a fun geeky event for all! I’ll likely try to go again in the future — it was really fun!
We now return you to your regularly scheduled hole in the wall reviews…