Saturday, October 17, 2020

Dry Ice Loophole Makes Mockery of Robotics Competition


There's no solution more compelling than those lazy "it's not stupid if it works" moments, even if they're technically against the rules. A low budget or DIY solution might make a judge mad, but you can't say that your solution wasn't effective. For another story of a stroke of lazy genius, here's a guy who needed a permit to build a garage so he just bought a van.

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Text - What is the funniest loophole you have ever seen? Kevin Yue, studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology When I was in school, they held a robotics competition. It was pretty simple, conceptually. You had to make a firefighting robot. It would have to navigate a maze, find a candle and put it out (fully automated, no remote control). I can't remember the exact size but I think the robot had to be smaller than 1 foot in length, width, and height. Scoring was as follows. You start with

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Text - • Could separate into parts to search rooms in parallel • Operated on very little code (there were a few benchmarks for this) I entered a block of dry ice: It basically just had a spring-powered hammer to shatter it into little pieces when the start timer went (so that it would evaporate faster)

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Text - In seconds the entire maze was filled with a white fog and the candle was definitely out. I had the fastest time by a landslide even before you counted my deductions: • Didn't use a fan? Check • Search every room? Check. • Separate into parts to put out fires in parallel? Check I think I could've been the only person in history to ever win a robotics competition without writing a single line of code or soldering a single wire. But alas, the judges disqualified me by unanimous vote. WHY AR

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