Innovative Team Building with Inventors at Verily
Innovative Team Building events rarely get tested to the degree than a room full of inventors and patent makers; the expectations are inherently high. Inventors appreciation day was capped with a large Robot Battles event where independent minds with huge force were asked to combine, communicate, and execute … and only later on invent new adaptations for the robots.
They did exceptionally well with team Fast Five – so named because unlike other teams they had only five people on their team, and they were fast – posting a scorching build time of 32:20 (thirty two minutes and twenty seconds) putting them near the top ten all time. Teams Jeffs, Thunder, The Winners, Dragons, The High Potentials, and Pansies, all completed robots successfully, making for lively and exciting melee battle rounds!
Seven robots went into the battle arena and survived several rounds of melee style combat. Balloon popping was more prevalent than robot flipping due to the carpet surface. Many of the inventors were obviously “gamers” in their free time as they displayed some deft maneuvers and admirable battle tactics.
After each person had a chance to battle, they began modifying the robots to achieve tactical advantage through innovation. Modifications included upside down arm, sideways arm, longer static arm, no arm and scoop, and batteries in series. The ladder did not work as expected and terminated the battle capacity of the robot immediately, upon further repair. No problem, we always have spares. They swapped burnt-out for our spec bot and went on to demolish the crowd until inevitable weakness from sustained blows slowed them to the pace of the others.
A huge thank you to Verily for inviting us to work with inventors and hosting us at your awesome campus.
Robot Team Building
