Bytemarks

Excitement reigned at this weekend’s 4th Annual FIRST Robotics Competition. This year 32 teams competed in a challenge involved arranging large plastic tubes on a rack. As you can see in the video, there was a short autonomous exercise, the logo sequence and a micro robot challenge in each of the heats. These heats go [...]

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The 6th Annual Hawaii FIRST LEGO League Championships were held on Saturday, Dec 11, 2010 at the Neal S. Blaisdell Arena. The FIRST LEGO League (FLL) introduces younger students to real world engineering challenges by building LEGO based robots that complete tasks on a thematic playing surface. This year’s theme was medical related with challenges [...]

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The 3rd Annual Pan-Pacific VEX Competition was held at the Hawaii Convention Center on Friday and Saturday, Dec. 3-4, 2010. 112 teams from across the U.S. including 12 from Mainland China competed in the event. This year’s game, Round Up, is played on a 12’x12’ square field. Two alliances – one “red” and one “blue” [...]

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Along side the MAARS was another interesting robotic vehicle called GUSS, the Ground Unmanned Support Surrogate. The team shown included (from left to right) Jesse Hurdus, Torc; Alfred Wicks, Virginia Tech; and Capt. Tim Bove, Marine Corp. Warfighting Laboratory. On first appearances, GUSS looks like a Polaris jeep equipped with antennae and sensors.  The units [...]

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In addition to the “big iron” being used in RIMPAC exercises, there are examples of “little iron” robots being field tested to protect and support the ground forces. I got a chance to see a couple of them this past weekend. Shown in the photo is the Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System (MAARS) unit manufactured [...]

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This year’s VEX Robotics Competition, held on Dec 4-5, involved the clearing of balls from one side of the field onto the other. Opponents needed to build robots that could pick up nerf size soccer balls and footballs and either dump them into the opponents area, shove them through a small window or throw them [...]

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