Demo at Cluj Napoca

The RoboCorp’s experience report about the demo at Cluj

At Saturday, January 26^th, we were at Cluj with the RoboCorp’s team to recognize our robot’s position and to try ourselves out. At 4 am. our little team started the journey and after a 5 hour trip we arrived to our destination. The demo competition took place in a building of the Technical University of Cluj.

The first challenge was the robot inspection where the robot’s exact size and weight was checked as well as the composition of it. Here we ran into some difficulties: the connector ribbon of our accumulator was broken so in the lack of a better idea we decided to repair it with some scotch tape which wasn’t so pleasing for the organisers. They also had some hints to make our robot work better. These were written down by us and we will learn from it.

In the meeting for the drivers the judges told the method of gaining point and the fatal errors which ones could lead to a disqualification. While every information is also written in the document, repeating it before the matches is a great idea because we have to stick to a lot of rules and we have to take track of every single one, especially the new members.

After all of that came the matches which ones led to more problems. The driver team changed. This was their first time to try the partly complete robot on a fully complete playing field (we could only test on half of the original playing field). We experienced how the navigation worked with four robots on the field in the same time and we have to work together with another team at the same time. At the time of a match the pressure is much higher and if a wire unplugs, it could make the robot stop. We also noted our current experiences of the competition and we hope to use some of them on next month’s first regional competition.

The representatives of our team: Csonta Ildikó, Vidám Szabolcs, Fodor Tímea, Kenyeres Ádám, Péter István, György Viktor, Balázs-Urkon Emőke.

A part of the day was that the mentors and team leader had a meeting too. It was really useful, we received a lot of guides about the regional competition in March. In the regional version the judges give away more awards related to the notebook so every team has a chance to go to the next competition in Bucarest. The placement’s will be chosen by the awards gained for the notebook and the points collected at matches. It’s still unknown, how many of the teams will go to the next level but probably from 40 teams 10-15 will not get the chance to compete again. They also pointed out that an interview will take place in front of the jury, to which we should prepare really good and we should convince them.

Then the end of the day arrived where we took part in a “mind broadening training” presented by the Soft Skill theme’s Gilia Crina lecture. This expression was new for a lot of us but we’ve got to know how usefully knowing these is to reach the final success and they also take part in the quality of driving. After the lecture whoever wanted, was able to go to the jury by itself and get advices personally about the notebook. We received some advices related to the editing of the notebook, what are the deficit’s and what we did correctly.

In the time of the event we gained a lot of experience. We met our old friends and received new ones. We learned from our and other’s faults so we could go to March’s event more prepared. This day was very successful, I could report that every team member left the Technical University’s building pleased. We are looking forward to the next event.

Lastly we have to thank the National Talent Program and the Ministry of Human Resources for supporting our trip, and Transylvanian Talent Council for conveying the support.

Written by Balázs-Urkon Emőke (X.F) and Fodor Tímea (XI.F)