Google Team Building Battle and Build Bots
Google Team Building is always a great day, and today was no exception. A room filled with talented and eager participants ready to roll over our robots with intellect and precision.
We had four dynamic teams including “Team Break the Rules” (originally “Team Not Follow the Rules” but was changed based on the task at hand), the Propellers, team Espresso, and team Passion Fruiters. Names equally likely with my daughters 8-year-old friends, but somehow instilled with deeper meaning here.
Passion Fruiters emerged as the crowd champion by winning at both the build competition and winning the most melee battles. They finished below the average build time posting a time of 43 minutes even. They were closely followed by Team Break the Rules finishing at 44:35 (forty-four minutes and thirty five seconds).
Team Espresso and the Passion Fruiters were kind enough to test our Robot Battles II prototype as well. They enjoyed greatly being bigger than the other bots and being able to push them around and flip them at will. One person compared it to having a special weapon in a video game that makes you super powerful.
Alas the prototype had some technical faults that rendered one arm ½ functioning. The scorpion arm worked great until the battery lost its juice, and then it could only attack down, but needed assistance from gravity to get back up into attack position. We are getting close to completing the prototype, but this is why we test it numerous times before going to production!
All in all it was another fabulous day building and battling robots with some of the world’s greatest people. Propellers and Espresso each had shining moments along the road, including Espresso winning the first melee with ridiculously large blue balloons. They earned the nickname Big Blue Balloon and went down in the history books as largest balloon victory of all time. Propellers worked a unique angle by having two bots at the same time – theoretically doubling their chances for points – until the other teams caught on.
A huge thank you to Google for inviting us to their Sunnyvale campus. We hope to return many times for future battles and builds!
Robot Team Building
