After a torturous span of time finding a place to park, we made it into the Fort Mason Center, where the games were held. The first thing we ran into were these big metal spheres rolling around. They're quite neat, we saw them at the Maker Faire a few weeks ago, too. There were a few other robots roaming around as well, including a cardboard bot with a dog's face that Megan liked and a little robot guy that was trying to give her a hug.
Last year we went on Sunday, so there were a few events going on that we didn't see before. In the "small but cool" category was the 100-gram weight class sumo competition. Two little autonomous robots, about the size of a couple matchboxes, start on a raised circle and try to push each other out of the ring. After this we saw robot hockey, two teams of three RC-controlled devices try to score goals for 10 minutes. We saw a very lopsided game that ended 13-zip. Later on in the day there was humanoid kung-fu - two awkwardly moving robots try to poke each other down while attempting (with mixed success) to remain upright themselves.
The big draw of RoboGames is the robot combat arena. It's continuously mobbed while events are going on and they don't have scheduled breaks, so getting seats, or even a place to stand where you can see, takes some patience. We finally did get seats. This is around about when Riley started throwing up last year, so we didn't get to see much last time. This time we were able to watch a bunch of great competitions. Spinning blades, flames, parts flying around, and a couple times where they actually had to repair the arena. We stayed until kids had basically driven Maura crazy (except Gavin, who slept the whole time). It was lots of fun, though. Hopefully we can go again next year.
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