Today in class we started working with the Pixy cameras, which will eventually be used by our robots to track down desired LEGO bricks. Two of the six groups ended up frying their cameras while trying to debug their code and circuits, but luckily both robots were unharmed. In addition to being a humorous rite of passage for engineering students, this slight hitch has been the only real disruption in this wonderful first week in Winterthur.
After class ended, we were invited to watch the Swiss engineering students compete with their robots. Since they had the entire term to develop their projects, the competition was more challenging than ours will be with color differentiation and mechanisms to lift blocks up and into their bots. We were wowed by the complexity of the different designs, and made sure to make some mental notes to prepare for our own LEGO brick snagging robots!
