We are pleased to announce that The RoboBees were finalists in the Infinite Recharge At-Home Skills Competition! This competition consisted of five different challenges, which were inspired by last year’s competition. Each challenge was a test of either an autonomous program or driver controlled. Depending on the challenge, the robot either needed to navigate an obstacle course in a short amount of time and with few errors or it needed to shoot power cells into a goal.
We competed against our peers in the Helium group. There were 51 other groups, named after chemical elements. Each group consisted of between 25 and 35 teams from around the world. However, only one winner (best score) and one finalist (second best score) could be named for each group.
Our robot performed extraordinarily well, competing in all five challenges. In the Galactic Search Challenge, where the robot located and collected power cells in two paths, we finished in 5.8 seconds. This had us tied for 14th best score in the world! In the Auto-Nav Challenge, where the robot had to autonomously drive along predetermined routes, we finished in 17.8 seconds. In the Hyperdrive Challenge, where robots were driven remotely through four paths, we finished in 26.7 seconds. In the Interstellar Accuracy Challenge, where robots had to shoot power cells into the bottom, inner, and outer ports from four zones, we scored 39 points. And finally, in the Power Port Challenge, where robots collected power cells and scored them into a power port, we scored 62 points.
Our team was the only finalist/winner from Maryland and one of the three finalists/winners from the Chesapeake District (Maryland/Virginia/DC)! In the global rankings, we placed 92nd out of 1,412 teams! We are very proud of the work that the students and mentors put into this effort. Stay tuned for our news on the Game Design Challenge!