San Francisco Offsite Robots and Lasers Combine for Fun
A San Francisco Offsite event at COVO on Mission Street with NKT Photonics was a huge success. COVO is an amazing oasis in the heart of Mission Street, a warm, professional, co-working space with meeting rooms for rent in the rear. They also offer an impressive espresso, and other tempting refreshments, bar onsite.
NKT Photonics is an incredibly unique company that offers laser solutions in almost every form available. “What are your laser plans?” is the question they are asking while in town from around the globe to attend Photonics West. One of their many products which caught my attention was a laser capable of shooting down a drone. We are in the era of drone combat, and this trend is only increasing. Not only is there a laser defense system capable of protection from combat drones, it could theoretically in short order be commoditized to a hand held model capable of clearing the park of aerial irritation?
This group was mostly sales folks all with PhDs. I am used to working with humans who are either sales people or engineers, it is not often both come in the same human package. As expected they performed remarkably well on the build challenge with team Death Star posting a top 10 all-time build time of 28:32 (twenty eight minutes and thirty seconds), and all teams finishing under 35 minutes, or in the top 10% all-time.
Teams #1 Excellent Chefs, If Things Get Bloody, GegenPress, and of course Death Star all battled several times to determine a battle champion. The melee round was taken by If Things Get Bloody with 1.5 wins, to 1, 1, and .5 for the other three teams. Death Star showed its prowess once more in the Last Survivor battles by winning twice in a row to win the prize of top team!
A huge thank you to NKT Photonics for a quick education about the breadth of the laser industry, and for a great time battling robots!
Robot Team Building
