Robotics

I’m gearing up to watch our regional robotics competition this weekend! The Devious Snail has been working long, long days at school since the beginning of January with his robotics team. The Devious Snail worked in the programming division. The robot is almost ready to rumble on the field this weekend. Last Wednesday we attended an open house where the robot was revealed, and it was pretty fun to see how crazy fast it can drive around the field, switch directions, scoop up balls, and shoot them into a goal. The robot has to complete a lot of other tasks as well, and it is constantly being tweaked.

I really have no idea how high schoolers can build such a complicated machine from scratch. Most of the time I have no idea what they are even talking about, and I certainly wouldn’t know how to run the machinery used to create all the pieces that went into this robot, not to mention that I have no idea how they could figure out how to program the robot to do the things it needs to do. In fact, after the open house I sat down with the Devious Snail and asked questions about how the robotics matches actually work, and the contest is so complicated that between his summary and my questions, it took 45 minutes just to get me up to speed about what happens when two teams of robots face off on the field.

Dr. Peds will be away, but The Banana and Mr. Trouble on Feet and I are looking forward to be being fans in the stand to cheer on the robot. I may be a reluctant soccer mom and an impatient baseball mom, but I am a very enthusiastic robotics mom, although completely clueless.