It was held in a semi-large auditorium-style classroom, put on by 6.270 and the Broom Club. Before it started, all the robots were displayed on a table in the hall with their team posters on the wall. Here are some team names that certain of my acquaintances are sure to appreciate (not so sure they'll read this though): Legolas-bot (sorry, don't currently recall the actual name), Unicron ("He eats planets.", came in 2nd, looked like a crab to me), something something something something fhqwhgads (all as an acronym like CWNSF, Esq.), Rogdor the Burninator, and my personal favorite, BiBimBot.
I went with my biologist friend and some of her lab friends. The funniest thing to me was that they were totally laughing at the "nerds" from the moment we got into the room til we left. They're going to the same nerdy institution! They were slow starting, and had some hang-ups. Let me lay the scene for you: On the stage there are two competition areas and various cameras and other devices (this was broadcast on the MIT cable station). Now, these are our brilliant future engineers and geeks and scientist, mind you, and the best they could do was hang some shoddy wood beams from the ceiling then attach what looked like broomsticks (which I suppose is appropriate, since the broom club was involved) at the end of which what appeared to be a webcam was stuck. There were two competition areas, one on the right side of the stage and one on the left (each a large box playing field with a raised center and various balls and some walls as obstacles- I'm sure you can find a picture on their website), and one of the previously mentioned contraptions dangled above each. They must've run out of broomsticks cuz one was two shorter sticks that had been somehow attached.
During the preparations there was a sudden crash and the lower half with the camera fell onto the competition area. So then they had to figure out how to be able to get high enough to reattach it, which they did magnificently with duct tape (again, appropriate, I suppose, as 3M was one of their sponsers). I was amused that this precarious contraption held together was the best the ingenious young minds of MIT could come up with.
The robot wars commenced, this was the final (3rd) round of a double-elimination competition. The first half was rather lackluster since the robots weren't as good. For example, some got stuck in corners, some spun in circles, and some just looked like they were freaking out. Let me explain something else, to clarify: The teams built a robot and had to program it with whatever strategy they thought would give them the best chance at winning. So, the only element of change is that depending on what the competing bot does, it could knock them off course and then they'd presumably have to compensate for that. Sometimes they successfully compensated, more often not, though.
Elizabeth and I ended up being hardcore and stayed to the bitter end- a whopping almost-3 hours of robot wars. We stayed at first so we could get google t-shirts. There were a lot of sponsers, and many of them sent reps to give a plug for the company and lure in the geeks and nerds with free t-shirts, memory sticks and little staplers, the last of which was rather dangerous as they flew out into the audience- they were in boxes, but my life flashed before me when I saw those sharp corners hurtling at me at one point. I ducked and it whizzed past somewhere to the rows behind me. My Open Source friends will be delighted to hear that the Microsoft rep was booed off the stage since he failed to bring any thing to pelt the audience with. Nearly all these reps were proud MIT geeks. (no offense to anyone! It's just interesting to look at the crowd at the robot wars and see what a difference it is from walking around Chico or Shasta College or Berkeley.)
Elizabeth and I were sitting by these obnoxious people (just two, thank heavens) with kazoos. Other people thought they were amusing, but we thought it was a little much. At one point they broke out full force in the MIT fight song:
I'm a beaver, you're a beaver, we are beavers all;
when we get together, we do the beaver call!
Cosine, Secant, Tangent, Sine
3.14159
Integral, Radical, u/dv
Slapstick, Siderule, MIT!
(don't worry, that didn't come from memory!) They were lucky enough get on tv for that one, and since we were sitting right next to them, we were lucky enough too! hahhaha-- so I've had my 5 seconds of fame on the surely well-watched MIT channel.
Bal the Merciless one and the night came to a conclusion. The teams were so excited and so into it; it was really funny to watch. Also the refs would get their faces right down by the competition box and be looking intently and counting up points; it looked like a serious wrestling match! Oh, I forgot to mention the commentators. These two totally nerdy guys were sitting in the front side with headsets on and commentating as if it were a spectator event! At first we could hear them and it was hilarious. Then they cut the sound and just had them on the tv broadcast. Too bad, cuz that would've totally upped the entertainment level for the night!
Tonight just holds a Mahler symphony- can't compete with robot wars, but delightful in quite a different way.
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