Scioly.org

Wow TIL it's aluminum. It's called a ferrule, so I assumed it contained iron.

For the people with one arm, has anyone thought of an effector to get all the pencils at once instead of having to do them individually?

No guarantee, but most ferrule's I've seen are magnetic.
But I'd watch electromagnets, they tend to be power hogs and overheat quickly.

Jeff Anderson
Livonia, MI

Are we allowed to preprogram our robot arm?

stephengee77 wrote:Are we allowed to preprogram our robot arm?

Yes.

Does anyone know who is proctoring Robot Arm at Nationals this year?

DaPlug wrote:Does anyone know who is proctoring Robot Arm at Nationals this year?

Allison Anderson, Jeff Anderson, Brandi Hansmeyer, Kent Gordon

http://www.scienceolympiad2016.org/robot-armc

Hey do you guys think having an apparatus that goes on top of all the dies and then is flipped so the 6s are facing up but the dies aren't sitting on the competition floor but rather on the apparatus would legally give you full points for the dies? In the rules it says the dies should be 'sitting flat' and some judges I had did not count dies which had evens facing up inside a carton or on an apparatus. I would ask this as a rule clarification or a faq on the official cite, but they are irresponsive.

Bazinga+ wrote:Hey do you guys think having an apparatus that goes on top of all the dies and then is flipped so the 6s are facing up but the dies aren't sitting on the competition floor but rather on the apparatus would legally give you full points for the dies? In the rules it says the dies should be 'sitting flat' and some judges I had did not count dies which had evens facing up inside a carton or on an apparatus. I would ask this as a rule clarification or a faq on the official cite, but they are irresponsive.

As specified by the rules, I believe the die must be sitting flat on the ground.

PA had two perfect scores with all four dice facing up with 6's. One finished at 2:20 something and the other was 2:57. First was manual while second was autonomous. The playing field was a little weird as the egg cartons were Styrofoam and the diagram on the floor was covered with a sheet of plastic. Made moving the egg cartons almost impossible without flipping them over. The team that came in first tried to pull it over, the egg carton flipped over, then they had to flip it back over to get the ping pong balls in. Otherwise, I think they would have finished in around 2:00. Great job to all of the robot arms. It was a very entertaining event.