Google Battle Robots Teambuilding
A Google Battle Robots Teambuilding event showcased 12 Robot Battles 1 combat robots built by 12 teams of 5-6 Googlers each.
The winning build team, pictured here, finished with a very fast time of 39:50 (thirty nine minutes and fifty seconds), five minutes and thirty seconds below the average build time! Most of the other eleven teams finished under 45 minutes which led to early battles with most of the robots battling in the arena. After two rounds of preliminary battles, we had reached all twelve battle robots operational at the same time!
The ensuing six rounds of points based combat, and a one round finale of a “last bot standing” competition, were spectacular. Twelve robots battling at the same time creates an enormous amount of energy, enthusiasm, and participation from a group of 60 people! Points are awarded for popping balloons, pushing a robot out of the arena, and for flipping a robot! We saw many flips in our melee combat rounds.
The Robot Battles robots can be modified by changing the attack arm into different configurations. With twelve robots battling, and twelve teams looking for an advantage, we saw multiple unique designs, and several highly effective technological winners.
The last-bot-standing finale is always a climactic finish with only one robot remaining as the sole champion at its conclusion. Teams get to pick their favorite driver based on the preliminary battles, and they get a few minutes to tune up and modify their robot one last time before the battle.
The last-bot-standing competition theoretically should determine a deserving champion if you consider that it likely is the robot that best combined the top 3 criteria: (1) was the best built robot, (2) sustained the least damage, and (3) had the most driver skill.
A huge thank you to Google for bringing us out to work with a talented and energetic group of robot experts (now)!
