LVBots Challenge 2.5 - Dec 2, 2006

Our forth robot competition was held again at Durango Hills Community Center / YMCA in the north west area of Las Vegas. We had 21 robots competing in the 4 different events, including our new Pool Race competetion.

We would like to thank the following sponsors for their gracious prize dontations:

Pololu	Solarbotics
Parallax	Wright Hobbies Robotics
Nubotics	Make: Magazine
Norland Research

Line Following Results

We had 6 robots competing in this event. Robots had to make 3 laps around the track without falling off, and were given 2 chances to do this. We started with preliminary races to determine the top 4, and then had a single elimination bracket to pick the winners. Many of the bots were racers at the last event, but all of those had slower times this time around. The line following track had 12 straight tiles, and 24 curve tiles, for a total 3 lap length of about 2821 cm.

	Robot	Builder	Best Time
1st Place	Laser	Byon Garrabrant	43.44 seconds
2nd Place	What's That Smell?	Jan Malasek	44.54 seconds
3rd Place	Quixo	Scott Garrabrant	1:35
4th Place	JG 1000	Jacob	2:02
	Got the Shakes	Mike Griffith	3:23
	Big Ugly	Candice Kamachi	Lost the line

Mini Sumo Results

We had 7 entrants in the mini sumo event. As we did last competition, the preliminary events were a chance for every bot to have a single battle with every other. Then the top 4 from the preliminaries went on to a single elimination bracket of best 2 of 3 battles.

	Robot	Builder	Preliminary Wins
1st Place	Ultra Violet	Jan Malasek	4 wins
2nd Place	Bucky 2.0	Scott Garrabrant	3 wins
3rd Place	Happy Jr.	Byon Garrabrant	6 wins
4th Place	Red	Mike Griffith	4 wins
	DK2	Dennis Krostoski	2 wins
	B-Dog	Brandon Hjelstom	1 win
	Quarto	Scott Garrabrant	0 wins

Line Maze Results

We had 3 competitors in the Line Maze event. They were all either a bot from, or from a builder in the 2.0 competition. All three solved the maze perfectly after the initial exploration. All three also showed a sign of realization of solving the maze, so all received the 0:10 bonus removes from their time. This event was down to one half a second between first and second place.

	Robot	Builder	Time
1st Place	Square	Jan Malasek	0:31 seconds
2nd Place	Mini Mazer	Byon Garrabrant	0:32 seconds
3rd Place	Quoridor	Scott Garrabrant	2:38

Pool Race Results

We invented a new event for this competition, a NASCAR style muli-bot race around a track. Two tracks were used, an inflatable pool, and also an inflatable pool along side a large trash bin. Bots started equally spaced around the track, and had to complete 5 laps around the track, while hopefully passing other racers. This resulted in several multi-bot pileups, but the winning bot was fast, and stayed far away from the inside walls of the track, so it was never caught up in the collisions. We had 5 competitors in this event, and, although we didn't realize that it would become such a contact sport, it was the most exciting event of the day.

	Robot	Builder
1st Place	Dog's Pants	Ben Schmidel	5 laps on complex course
2nd Place	Her Pleasure	Nat Luvera	3 laps on simple course
3rd Place	Centrifugal Force	Scott Garrabrant	3 laps on simple course
	Pool Boy	Dave Leblanc	3/4 lap on simple course
	Wiggles the 2nd	Candice Kamachi	1/2 lap on simple course