We sent three teams to the Botball Global Conference and Tournament in Norman Oklahoma, July 7 to July 12.  Team 92 and Team 93 competed in the Botball tournament.  We also had a Beyond Botball team. The conference and tournament was held at the student union of the University of Oklahoma, in Norman.  There were 58 teams from around the country.  It was a little crowded. We have a slideshow of all the pictures.  We also have a video of around the tournament activities (Windows Media 7MB). Next year, this event will be held in Leesburg, Virginia.

The competition was very tough.  Our teams did well in the seeding rounds, but ran into problems in the competition rounds. Here is a list of the final results and a detailed list of the team scores. Things we did well... Each Robot had independent strategies. Finished robots early, tested more. Internal competition. People who could not go to Oklahoma helped work on the bots during June. The blockers seemed to work, but were hard to set up. The teens set up and took down the heavy table every work session.

Things to improve...

• We need to think more about other team's strategies, and have multiple solutions.
• Claws and arms need to be more rigid and predictable.
• We need more time to work between Regionals and Nationals.
• We need to secure all parts on the robot, especially the processor.
• We need to teach new programmers.
• Always keep the Time-Out card with you.
• Hold internal training session in September, with emphasis on programming.
• More sensors for the bots to help locate themselves.  We shouldn't be sensitive to initial positioning.
• We need to compartmentalized tests, so we don't have to test everything every time.
• And what we say every year - we need more checklists.

Team 92 included Roger Ding, Chris Emr, and Katherine Kirby.  Several other members of the Explorer Post helped during June to prepare the robots to compete.

We submitted glamour pictures and a biography on our robots.

Team 92 had an average seeding round score of 87.5, that put them in 10th place.  During the competition rounds, they had some start up problems.
 

Team 92 included Stephen Carlson, Nick Arnold, and Terry Sifrit.  We combined members from the regional competition Team 196.  And again, several other members o f the Explorer Post helped prepare the robots during June.

The robots were named Laurel and Hardy. This team also submitted glamour pictures and a biography on the robots.

Team 92 had an average seeding round score of 72, that put them in 14th place.  During the double elimination, they ran into some very tough competition and had losses by just a few points.
 

Starting in January, Bob Ekman and some of the other adult Post advisors started working on the Beyond Botball problem.  At the competition, Bob got the other two chaperones, Karen Kirby and Bill Carlson, to run the bots.

The robots work very well, and so did the operators. The competition had some good ideas that might of given us problems. But our team won the seeding rounds, the double elimination, and the overall competition. We were also presented a "Judges Choice" award.

Awards Video (Windows Media 20MB) -

Our team name was the "Lunar Cleaners", because we were cleaning up the Lunar surface. Here is a biography on the robots.
 

To run the Beyond Robots, Bob wrote an operation guide.

After we returned from the competition, we came up with a solution that may have given us even better scores.  Here is the video (Windows Media 21MB).