In keeping with our corporate philosophy of supporting community initiatives that promote youth education, we decided to venture off slightly and sponsor an event that takes community engagement among youth to heart; the same way Vigilant Futures does.
This year, Youth Action Montreal is organizing an event that will draw thousands of college and university-aged students from across the country to our fair city with the hope of igniting a flame of social activism and community engagement. The theme: Living Your Legacy and Vigilant Futures is a proud sponsor.
Key-note speakers include several notable Canadians like David Suzuki, Michaëlle Jean, and Stephen Lewis, but also former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. The conference will also feature local community youth projects, including an organization dear to Vigilant Futures, Youth Fusion.
The day promises to be insightful and inspirational, with lots of calls to action I’m sure.
TOMS Shoes decided April 5th would be a good day for people around the world to commemorate the fact millions of children globally do not wear shoes on a daily basis simply because they don’t have any. Poverty in developing countries doesn’t allow for shoes when food and shelter are more important requirements. This leaves the very young exposed to infection, intestinal worms, cold weather disease, and countless other diseases most people in developed areas take for granted every day.
So Vigilant Futures lent their support in the way of barefoot feet hitting the cold and rainy pavement of downtown Montreal with local ‘One day without shoes’ event organizers. We all met on the corner of St. Catherine and University, donned in the proper attention-getting signage and attire, but minus socks and shoes. Our bare feet were the star attraction by far.
Needless to say, spring is a little late this year and the ground was not very cooperative yesterday. On the plus side, the pavement was so cold it numbed our feet pretty quickly so the nasty elements Montrealers leave behind on sidewalks were a distant thought.
Sure some of us walked around barefoot in the office all day but that was inadequate preparation for what we felt outside, what millions of kids around the world feel every day but don’t give it a second thought because they’ve never known anything else.
The day started off with the conclusion of the qualification rounds before lunch and the main event which began at 1:00. As the previous day, the team decided that with the difficulties we had with our arm (although functional and still capable of scoring at the highest level) and with the lack of a mini-bot deployment system, that we would stick to defensive play.
Some Vigilant colleagues arrived minutes before we hit the field in our final qualification round. Unfortunately, we had a problem with the battery and the robot was lacking power despite a full charge. This was disappointing for the lack of performance as well as it being what we we’re certain was going to be the only opportunity to show off our bot to the ’Vigilant brass’. But to our surprise and great excitement, we made it to the quarter finals. The team immediately got to work on tweaking what we could. By this point there wasn’t much we could do that hadn’t been done the two previous days, but we decided that as we weren’t using out bot to score we would disconnect all electronics for the lift and arm systems in an effort to maximize the potential of our battery.
Our bot was paired with two relatively strong bots which were happy to have us as a defender. Our robo-trio fought our way through the quarter undefeated and moved on to the semi-finals with great excitement.
In the semi-finals our trio was up against a team lead by bot 2051, undisputed best bot in our division run by a team with many years of experience and several regional championships under their belt. We focused on blocking this bot in particular, but their superior speed made this difficult at best and we lost the first round. Given this challenge ahead of us on the game field, we stripped as much of the lift system and arm and anything else that could be removed from our bot so as to lighten our load and give us a little extra speed. Unfortunately, 2051 was still a fair bit faster than we were and we weren’t able to match their speed and we were eliminated in round two.
This concluded Henri-Bourassa High School’s 2011 participation in the First Robotics competition. Still in good spirits for getting further than any other Quebec team, we packed up our robot, dismantled our pit and went out to celebrate.
It’s been another long day, albeit a little shorter than yesterday. It was still a good 14 hrs from the time I left this morning to the time I got back to the hotel. The qualifying rounds are largely done and will conclude tomorrow before lunch.
Update on our robot: Our hook at the end of our forklift-arm wasn’t functioning well, so we replaced it with something much simpler. Although we can still score on pegs of all levels, we decided that our robot is best served as a defender or as a support to our more aggressive teammates. This also means that chances of us continuing beyond the qualifying rounds are slim. But the team doesn’t seem to mind. It’s unfortunate that our driver only began to figure out the best way to play defensively after most of the points have already been tallied.
Over the course of the day, our robot performed well and didn’t suffer the mechanical problems so many of the other bots had. Although we worked on the minibot and deployment system in the limited time between matches, we weren’t able to complete it. This isn’t overly disappointing as there are only a very small number of robots which have managed it properly. Some teams kept their robots so simple that the only thing they can do is play defence (no autonomous mode, no ability to score, no minibot)!
During the official competition tomorrow, the two most impressive robots to watch 1114 and 2054. These two not only perform with remarkable speed and accuracy under user control, but their autonomous modes go well beyond that of all the other robots in that they are able to consistantly place the tube in their claws at the beginning of the match on the highest peg and then go in search of a second tube on the ground and virtually always place it on a different peg at the same height before the 15 second timer is up!
