Meta Modifications Highlight Innovation
Meta Modifications Highlight Innovation in the Robot Build and Battle team building event.
We convened in the “Tomb Raider” outdoor space high atop the MPK campus in Menlo Park!
9 teams competed to build the robot faster than each other, for the World Record, and for the Meta record!
The team pictured above, built the robot in an AI-chip-fast-time of 33:53 (thirty-three minutes and fifty-three seconds). This placed them 8th all-time at Meta and 69th All-time with all companies! With thousands of participants, this is is clearly a truly exceptional result!
In addition to posting a super fast build time, this group also showed off some “innovation muscles” with multiple unique attack arm designs.
Pictured above are: the Rhino (right of team image), Rhino Single Horn (top right corner), Rhino side view (top left corner), Right Angle Down (Bottom left corner), and Low L (bottom right corner).
The Rhino focuses completely on flipping and pushing robots, and sacrifices popping of balloons. Flipping a robot is 3 points so it makes sense in the same way the three pointer in the NBA has gained traction in the last decade.
Indeed, the Rhino ran over the competition, seemingly flipping robots at will, if not pushing them 3 feet out of the arena! Alas, with all great innovation, people adapt. In this case, groups imitated and adapted Rhino into other designs to protect their assets. One example, Single Horn Rhino, kept the needle for popping balloons, while adding a vertical attack module versus a horizontal module in the original Rhino!
The battles were predictably more competitive with each round. Teams adapted designs to keep-up and/or counteract what worked well.
In the finale “Last Bot Standing” championship Rhino was thwarted by the balloons, the Achilles Heal of all great bots!
A huge thank you to another creative and resourceful group from Meta for inviting us out to Menlo Park to join you in building and battling robots!
