Crated and Shipped: End of Build Season

Boten Anna

This year's robot has been crated and shipped, and is now, presumably deep in the bowels of the shipping company, or in storage somewhere, sitting and waiting. And it's going to sit there for at least a good three weeks, because the Microsoft Seattle Regional is not until March 20th.

Our 2008 robot is named "Anna", after the Basshunter song "Boten Anna" [Wikipedia article] that went around on the Interwebs a little over two years ago, and peaked on the charts of several European countries. We were going to name the 2007 robot Anna, but it was not very well-put together, so we called it Ultimate Novice halfway through the Pacific Northwest Regional to reflect that. I'm not at liberty to discuss all the bells and whistles, but I can talk in general terms!

Anna has ten sensors and seven motors, as compared to Ultimate Novices' zero and four, respectively. This is, of course, a great step up in both complexity and fine-tuning, but we've managed it! There are also quite a few software dampeners on anything that uses victors (five of seven). There's slip prevention by using the accelerometer and gear-tooth sensors, and the gear-tooth sensors on both wheels are supposed to take care of any hardware deficiencies in the drive wheels. We spent a little while doing decorations for Anna as well.

For a robot that is named after a Eurotrance song, it should at least look the part, right? As you can tell from the photos, the most prominent feature is the Maypole, formerly known (or codenamed) as the Atomic Plunger. When we were deciding on how to decorate Anna, Anna (who is a team member, not an IRC bot or a robot proper) suggested we paint it as a maypole. Aside from writing "HADOKEN" on it (we decided that putting a boxing glove on top would be a valid substitute) nobody had any better ideas, and since the Maypole is from Scandinavia and Basshunter is from Sweden, it fit nicely with Anna's namesake. The guy wires stabilizing it are not the ribbons used in the traditional Maypole celebrations, but they do bear an odd resemblance. Aside from the Maypole, the robot features cold cathode lights. We had many left over from past years, and decided that it was worthwhile to put some ambient lighting on Anna. The cathodes are connected to a spike and we can pulse them on or off (within reasonable times for cathodes...). They are currently green, but we will switch them out for blue and white ones that should arrive next week.

Our school and team colors are Blue and White (columbia blue, navy blue, and pure white to be more specific), so you may notice that Anna is painted blue and silver. The bumpers, which are not shown but are in the shipping crate, are blue and silver as well. What does slightly bother me is that if we are ever on the red alliance, there will be confusion. "Wait, why is the blue robot on the red team?"

The only thing that remains to make Anna into a Ravebot is to hard-wire some speakers into it. That seems like a legit project after we get back from the competition.