Isn't she cute?
The past few months had been extremely tiring and arduous for me and my design group mates. It can really take days or even weeks for me to tell you everything that i had gone through in the manufacturing and testing of our robot. To cut the story short, this afternoon was the final competition for Champion Stacker. There were around 9 groups doing the In-house design project and we were supposed to build the robot according to our desing and let it compete on the arena to see whose robot can stack as many blocks as possible within 3 minutes.
In the process of manufacturing and testing of our robot, we were overwhelmed by lots and lots of problems, honestly speaking, one problem after another...We called it the 1001 problems...You just think of any single problem under the sun, i-cute has experienced it all...from 'Parkinson's disease' (jerky grippers) to brain damage (burnt HandyBoard)... We spent so much time troubleshooting...want to find out the amount of time invested in this project??
For the past 2-3 weekends (Friday to Sunday), eight of us took turn doing shift testing, 4 people per testing for more than 12-hours per shift...There were even times when a few of us stayed in school for more than 24 hours to test the robot and troubleshoot all the problems...There was not a day without me not doing robot...For the past 2 weeks, during weekdays, we woke up at 5 am so as to be able to reach school at 6 am to do testing, as there would be many groups doing testing on the arena in the afternoon. Two days before the competition, i was in school from 5 am till the next day 7 am...without a single second of sleep! One day before the competition, we stayed in school till 1 am...
Throughout this project, we kept on emphasizing that we did not aim to win! We just wanted to make the robot perform what it was supposed to on the day of competition...Weeks before the competition, looking at other group's robots could sometimes demoralise us...Theirs are so much bigger than ours, much taller, very rigid, made of metal, while ours was just a tiny, short robot made of PLASTIC! But what consoled us was the fact that our robot is very unique in terms of its look, its strategy of gripping, its design...mainly every single aspect of this robot is just very unique!!! We then named our robot "i-cute" to emphasize its cuteness! (oh btw the gender of this robot is FEMALE, haha!)
Two days before the competition, i-cute managed to grab 9 blocks and stack them onto the platform (That's our main aim! we never aim higher than 9 blocks, even though we were aware that other groups managed to put 12 blocks or aimed to stack 18 blocks). One day before the competition, there were few success tries and few failures...the inconsistency of her performance did trouble us. We were just hoping for the best!
On the day of the competition, a few hours before the competition started, i-cute refused to cooperate...the grippers were not functioning well, all our tries on the arena failed! We tried lots of ways to troubleshoot the problem...just minutes before the competition, we implemented a possible solution without even testing for it...We were gambling on the possibility that this would either solve the gripper problem or affect the whole programme. I was totally stressed out for the whole of this morning and afternoon, my heart was beating extremely fast and the fastest rate was experienced during the 2 mins and 50 seconds of my robot's performance on the competition arena.
i-cute started off well from the starting point, the gripping problem was solved, to our amazement! Every single movement of i-cute was perfect, like what we expected...And i-cute managed to successfully stack 9 blocks on the arena, beating all other robots which performed before her turn! I am so emotionally attached to this robot that seeing her stacking the last 3 blocks on the platform made me burst into tears! For the past few months, when problems arised, i would not be able to concentrate doing other things but robot...even receiving a msg frm my group mate informing abt the new problem which arised during testing could disrupt my concentration during lecture...I even dreamt abt this robot several times...
In terms of the number of blocks, we lose out to Lester's group whose robot managed to stack 12 blocks, but we were extremely satisfied and proud of i-cute's performance simply because:
- i-cute is TOTALLY AUTONOMOUS robot (no wire from the power source, no download cable, she relied fully on the internal batteries)
- i-cute succeeded performing her task ON THE FIRST TRY! None of the other robots managed to do that
- "Time-out" was not in i-cute's dictionary!
- i-cute's design was totally different from all other robots (some of which have very similar design)
- i-cute's strategy in stacking the blocks was totally unique, different from other groups!
- i-cute was selected to be kept in NUS design lab (with another group's robot) to be displayed for future batches (and i'm so 100% sure, i-cute's video will be shown to the future in-house design project students)
- i-cute has a very famous identity! Other groups never call us by the name of our group member, but by our brand "i-cute"!
- With such a small size and fragile look, i-cute managed to show that she can perform as good as other bulky and tall robots and even better!
- Only i-cute managed to make the audience "waaahhh-ing" and "hahahaha-ing"!
Nothing can beat the joy and satisfaction of seeing this robot performing to our expectation...I was totally over the moon, jumping for joy, extremely extremely happy...The feeling was just indescribable by words, even as i'm typing this entry, i'm still smiling from ear to ear...All our hard work really pays off at the end!
I would really like to thank lots of people who have helped contribute to this project in one way or another:
1. First and foremost, my team mates: Jian wei, Yaowen, Diah, Hejie, Guo Long, Zhongmin, and Qinhan...I REALLY REALLY LOVE WORKING WITH U GUYZ! Honestly, this's my best project group ever throughout my NUS life...I never dread waking up early in the morning to do testing or even staying overnight in school coz i know that you guyz will always make me laugh with all your jokes, funny comments, gossips...Our hobby is talking cock while doing work! haha... At this moment, i did feel a loss...i really gonna miss what we went through together for the past few months! I will never forget all our gossips and our discussions about Relationship... Special thanks to our main programmers: Jian wei, Yaowen and Qinhan, we really relied a lot on you guyz! To Zhongmin, my 'private driver', thanks a lot for driving us here and there (NUS Engin - FOng Seng - PGP- Rochor), haiz...now there will be no more driver for me to go to school,haha...
2. My boyfriend, for patiently listening to all my robot stories everyday, for helping me troubleshooting my sensors problem, for helping me carrying the tool box and robot stuffs back to my room (my group mates even called him "the logistic man",haha), for all your encouragement and words of comfort, for coming down on the day of the competition to support me...really really thank you!!! And very sorry if i scare u off during the competition with my trembling hand and very heavy breathing...it's really uncontrollable! haha...
3. Lysia, Evan, Erick, Zhiyong, Ruizhong, and Bernard for coming down this afternoon to support i-cute
Wanna see how i-cute performed during the competition? Check this out !
We get addicted watching this video that zhongmin and i decided to watch this video every day before we sleep until we get sick of it, haha...It was really really unbelievable that we could achieve this! I'm still smiling till this moment (more than 12 hours after the competition) and if u see me smiling while walking around school in the next few days, that means i'm thinking of "i-cute"!
After the competition, Zhongmin asked," So whose shift is it tomorrow? pick u guyz at 5.45 am?" All of us burst into laughter...
Take a look at our journey to success:
taken after our first meeting with our Prof.
(Zhong min, Jian wei, Lyd, Diah, Guo Long, Yaowen, He Jie, Qin han (from L to R))
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