Three, two, one… ACTIVATE!
Learn what happens when Pi-robots clash
This month we heard from Michael Horne, co-organiser of Pi Wars, an annual Raspberry Pi robotics competition.
In Cambridge, on 21 and 22 April, Michael, Tim Richardson and an army of volunteers led by head judge Dr Lucy Rogers from RobotWars and the Guild of Makers welcomed 65 teams of roboteers to the fourth Pi Wars. On the Saturday, 29 school teams battled it out on the courses and were also judged for technical and artistic merit. There was also a special prize: The HAL 9000 Award for the robot most likely to take over the world! The overall winners were from Doctor Challoner’s Grammar School in Amersham with teams from London and Aberdeen in second and third place.
The surprise winner of the Pi Noon duel challenge was Wilbury Primary School from Edmonton, narrowly beating Westpark Club. On the Sunday, 36 Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced non-school teams had their turn. In the Beginner category, Medway Makers came out on top ahead of Paranoid Android from Royston and Radioactive Funky Chickens from Cambridge, while in the Intermediates, Milton Keynes-based David Pride and X-Bot took first place from the pi-top team and Exabot2. In Pi Noon, a tense battle resulted in Hitchin Hackspace taking the trophy narrowly from X-Bot.
Perhaps the biggest cliffhanger of the weekend was saved until the very last minute - Tim announced that there was only one point between first and second place in the Advanced/Pro category. In the end, the plaudits and spoils went to the team from Ipswich Makerspace, beating last year’s winner, Brian Corteil from Coretec Robotics. Check out all the results and more at www.piwars.org.