Walker Competition

Students from Malvern Collegiate Institute, a high school in Toronto, were the returning champions. They had tough competition for their Ant walker, however. Solarbotics new ScoutWalker IIIs were out in droves. Luckily for Malvern, ECRG changed the walker competition and adopted rules based on those seen at PDXbot.

The new rules award points using the Froude number, which gives a measure of speed relative to the size of the robots’ legs. This meant that Ant had a natural advantage because of its shorter stature. And indeed, the competition for first was very close between Ant and Joe Garcia’s ScoutWalker III, with Ant only losing on the last run after becoming tangled in carpeting.

Actually, nearly all of the walkers fouled in the carpet. Scout was the only one to complete the course on all three runs. The proud father in me says that this was because of Joe’s work on the legs, on which he spent tens of hours meticulously shaping and reshaping. That’s my boy!

Malvern said something to Joe about building a better walker next year and kicking his (ahem) tail. Looks like we might have a grudge match next year. All in good fun, of course.