Saturday, May 2, 2015

Maine Robotics Track Meet 2015 report

Today I got to witness something really cool. 

My brother Ned is on his middle school's LEGO Mindstorms Robotics Team, and today that team travelled to the 2015 Maine Robotics Track Meet in South Portland, Maine. There are five other kids on the team, and they are all Mindstorms robotics whizzes. Some of the models they created were mind-blowing. The team calls itself "Hawkbotics."

Well, Hawkbotics asked me to live-tweet their participation in the meet, and I said I'd do that and also write about their achievements here on The Brick Bucket. Their Twitter handle is @hawkbotics, and you can go there to see my full collection of live-tweets. (You can also check out their webpage, www.hawkbotics.weebly.com.) I was going to do a write-up here on the blog, but I can't transfer my pictures and videos from Twitter to Blogger, and the post wouldn't be the same without images. But you absolutely need to head to the Hawkbotics Twitter and see some great LEGO robotics. 

The most amazing part: Hawkbotics set a new world record in the Ping Pong Shotput event. They actually held the previous record of 201 points from last year, but with some modifications to their rig, they smashed their old score and posted a new one of 279 points, a record that should stand for a while. I never would've thought that my local LEGO robotics team - six middle schoolers from a small town in Maine - would do something this significant, but Hawkbotics proved me wrong. 

Again, the Twitter account is @hawkbotics. Video of the record-breaking Ping Pong rig can be found here, and an image can be found here. Give the account a follow if you want to see more LEGO robotics stuff; I'll totally be live-tweeting again at next year's meet! 

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