Saturday 1 October saw the last scrimmage for Upper North Island teams before the much-anticipated Robot World Cup (RWC) next week. As teams work to fine-tune their robots leading to the RWC, the Auckland Scrimmage hosted by Pinehurst School gave teams their last opportunity to not only get some matches in, but also to qualify for the RWC.
Qualification for New Zealand teams for the big competition is based on Robot Skills Scores. With $NZ 10,000 of prize money being offered to the winning alliance, many teams camped out at the Skills fields, focused on qualifying their robots for the RWC. The lunch break was extended to ensure that all teams had plenty of opportunities to score the highest number of points possible. However, AURA volunteers experienced an intense final hour of the scrimmage as many teams queued to do as many runs as possible at the Skills field, attempting to increase their Drivers Skills score each time, with aMAX(720p) scoring an impressive New Zealand leading 38 points.
As always, AURA volunteers, along with members from Massey University (MESS) played an integral role in ensuring the scrimmage ran smoothly. From queuing teams, scoring matches, resetting fields (an activity AURA members are getting extremely fast and skilled at!) to running the two skills fields, there was no shortage of help and support.
With this being the fourth formal Gateway Scrimmage for the Upper North Island, many teams have made significant progress with their autonomous programming. The high quality in building, programming and strategising was evident in the number of matches where very few objects were left on the floor at the end of the match. Such matches went down to the wire where teams worked to strategically use the negating barrels. New Zealand teams are definitely strengthening their world-class reputation in the robotics community.
At the end of qualification, Otumoetai College (2941A and 2941B) proved to be very strong competitors as the first seeded alliance. Sixteen teams played through the elimination rounds to produce an intense final between the first seed and the eventual winners, aMax (720p) and Free Range Robotics (2921). In all the final matches, both alliances scored all of the objects within the first minute and had to sit around waiting for the last thirty seconds to introduce doubler and negation barrels. Having also scored the highest combined Drivers Skills alliance score, aMax and Free Range Robotics go into the RWC as the top-seeded alliance.
Less than a week remains till the first day of competition at the Robot World Cup and we hope that many people will be down at The Cloud on Queens Wharf (Auckland), supporting not only the New Zealand teams, but also the international teams travelling from Mexico. We look forward to an exciting three days of competitive robotics and will be posting daily updates of all action!