Competition Robot Photos & Team Video

Our team video on the project can be found here, but some quick photos are below:

Competition Day!

Guess what…The Young Pi-oneers came 10th overall for Young Novices in Pi Wars 2024! We also came 3rd in the Zombie Apocalypse (shooting) challenge!!

Our robot competed in all seven of the challenges which included: Eco disaster (pushing “toxic” barrels into recovery zones), Minesweeper (driving from randomly lit up to square to randomly lit up square to diffuse the bombs), Zombie Apocalypse (shooting zombie targets), Pi Noon (1:1 robot duels to pop opponents balloons), Escape Route (driving through a maze blindly), The Temple of Doom (driving over an obstacle course) and Lava Palava (following a line autonomously). We had to adapt the robot from challenge to challenge by utilising the various attachments that we had designed and built. 

On the day we had 2 main technical problems, both of which I believe came down to pure bad luck. The less substantial of the two was a loose wire which meant one of the four motors could not go in one direction, which meant it was difficult to turn and drive. The other problem we encountered was during Eco disaster when we accidentally drove quickly into a corner and our grabber snapped in half. This meant that we had to continue by pushing the barrels with the front of our robot, although that was tricky and sometimes caused it to get stuck.

As I was driving the robot, nerves were my only feeling as there were a lot of people watching and cheering. Competition day was full of mixed emotions because for one thing it was fun and a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders, but in another way it was sort of sad because the Pi Wars fun was over. The main thing that I enjoyed was the atmosphere of all robot enthusiasts, all cheering for all the robots to succeed. 

When we won the 10th place award I mostly felt confused because I thought we had not done that well, but then I felt happy as I collected the prize. It seems that scoring consistently across the challenges had helped us get a good total score.

During the build up to the competition I've improved at coding, especially in Python using UART communication protocol between microcontrollers. The most difficult coding challenge was line following and I learnt how to use Bing Chat (AI Co-Pilot) to generate code. I have gained a lot more experience soldering in order to make the robot's circuits. I have also refined my 3D design/3D printing in order to create parts. I've also practised writing blog articles to share my experience.

All of the team contributed and really enjoyed experience. Some of the feedback from in the team was:

During the build process I learnt so much, including soldering and wiring, coding, designing and 3D printing, working as a team and what goes into building a robot.

On the day of the event I enjoyed seeing other people’s robots to see the techniques and designs that they had used. I also enjoyed watching our robot attempt the various challenging challenges. It was also good to hang out with my friends and family who supported us during the process.

If we were to do it again I think the skills I have learned and the ideas gathered from the other teams we would do even better

Overall, an amazing experience!

When do we sign up for next year? 😃