Walker Competition

Year after year, Malvern CI’s kids do great in the walker competition. They took first in 2003, second in 2004. Of course, Joe took first that year. Joe was expecting to have something of a grudge match with the Malvern student this time. Unfortunately, the fella did not return. Doubly unfortunately, Malvern’s Ants 2 robot had an electronic failure. Which is too bad, for the mechanics looked solid.

Actually, they would have beat Joe and Scout. The race track surface was right on stage. Dust from foot traffic powdered a well-waxed wooden floor. Scout kept slipping, both physically and in time. Last year’s best run was 52 seconds. This year’s was 153 seconds. Needless to say, Scout did not come in the top three.

Luckily we had Forever Core, the walker Joe and I scratch built. We out-rigged it for wall-following. Fastest run time? 15 seconds! Forever Core averaged 27 seconds overall and came in first.

Rounding out the top spots were Lee Szuba’s Toddler (good programming!) and University of Waterloo’s Tipsy (neat mechanism!).