Team WMR started the day with a robot that didn't work; no arms, motors, wireless link or webcams. Our spirits were crushed and the team felt like giving up and heading home. There were severe doubts with the capability of the motors to lift our new arm. Having not had a manufactured arm until the day before we left for Germany we could not test for this. We suspected the control boards had failed after attempting to move the arm and only managing to do so once before it stopped working.

The arrival of 3 former members of WMR lifted our spirits and collectively we managed to solve numerous problems before the next run. We discovered that by applying more power to the motors we were able to overcome the weight problem and finally get the arm moving. Having not had enough time to test our control code we decided to go in with a stationary arm and do our best.

We managed to find two victims and scored points accordingly, qualifying us for the next round of the competition as other teams are unable to find any victims. Unfortunately, during the course of the run the head of the robot flew backwards and hit against a wall, causing the router to break and forcing us to end our turn early. Interestingly, many of the other teams are concentrating more on the autonomy side of the competition as opposed to the tele-operated, giving us the edge with our ultra-mobile platform.

Tomorrow, we'll be working on fixing the arm and manipulator and gripper as well as improving reliability before each run so we don't have to drop anymore!