Cheers to 'La Vida Robot'!

Actually the Carl Hayden High bot came in fourth, if the movie is true to real life. MIT had 85 points, Virginia Teach and Cornell had 80 and Carl Hayden High had 75.

It isn't what happened in real life.
They placed 3rd in the submersiv contest, not 4th.
I don't know why they changed that. The figures are also wrong. They changed or omitted some of the course challenges.

I am not sure how well MIT was represented in the movie. I have great admiration for this institution and their robotics program, but in this movie they came off as if they were out of touch with the real world. They threw $18K into their robot and their main challenge was to make the robot's advanced and complex components work, rather than trying to solve the challenges that were documented prior to the competition.

Well as long as the solution works, it's all the same to the judges.
In the documentary "Underwater dreams" the MIT guys were also surprised to place only 2nd. They figured they botched the technical report. They surpassed any other team in the diving contest part, so they succeded in that part.
In the book it says the MIT team also cleared the sonar challenge, that no other team was able to clear.
As I said, in the documentary they admit, they they were too focussed on the technical aspects of the competition and neglected the technical report and how to "sell" it to the judges. But this was demanded

http://web.mit.edu/rov/www/OldSite/documents/Explorer_class_final.pdf

"Creating an informative, clear, and concise visual presentation that effectively explains
how your vehicle systems function and why you constructed them the way you did will
go a long way in helping you to sell your “product” to the “client” – in this case, the
competition judges."

this ist the stinky technical report

http://www.sciencefriday.com/binary-data/ATTACHMENT/file/000/035/35614-1.pdf

And what was MIT's conclusion regarding the challenge to recover liquid from the sunken sub? It could not be done! If they couldn't do it, no one could! Was there a maximum length allowed on the tether lines? If not then why didn't they just use a longer tether? Of course this could implicate various factors, such as loss of power or control signals because the tether was too long. Or it could have been a question of the weight or maneuverability if the tether was beyond a certain length.

There was no maximum length limit. But the cables weigh a lot and tend to slow and drag the submersive down, so you want to keep it on a short leash, at least I would imagine so.
The MIT Failed to insert / connect their sucky thingy into the barrel in order to extract the liquid out. So they passed on that and archieved the highest score in that part nonetheless. The other collges also failed to do so, and apparently often ignored the challange to gather easier points. It was the highest grossing challenge if compelted successfully.
The mexicans were apparently lucky to do so with only a few tries. Lucky or not they succeded nonetheless. Not perfect, since their sample was diluted.

The challenges were 70% of the total score, so it is possible the judges docked points big time due to MIT's conclusion. And there is also the interviews. There MIT's representation in the movie was sub par. I really wanted to see much more time in the movie dedicated to the interviews. Since Carl Hayden was fourth I would have thought that the interviews would play an critical part on whether the high school would move up or down in the rankings. I wanted to see how the other schools responded, even if only the four top rankings schools interviews were shown. Why did did some schools move up? Why did others move down?

No the points were determined beforehand
http://web.mit.edu/rov/www/OldSite/documents/Explorer_class_final.pdf


The MIT weren't the protagonists or fleshed out, so I didn't care for that.
And the toehr school, witht that girl did gave some answers.

The technical report and the itnerview played a big part. They explain it in the PDF.
There were several engineers, scientist etc. as judges, but also administrative personal that weren't very knowledgable about ROVs etc.
The presentation needed to appeal to them and it was demanded in the requirements.

Another matter was the competition classification. There were two classes; one for high schools and another for colleges. Carl Hayden had no business competing in the college class competition, yet they did, further putting the odds against them. I assume all other high schools avoided the college level competition because they did not want to be clobbered by students that had more expertise, knowledge and resources than they did. Of course this is an error in judgement. For this reason, after the judges saw that Carl Hayden did admirably well coming in fourth in the challenges I see no reason why they would have voted in favor in Carl Hayden just because of their education, ethnic or social status.

No, there were 2 classes.
Ranger (challenging) and Explorer (hard)
Several colleges opted to participate in the Ranger classe, so Mexicans figured, that they may participate in the Explorer class, since the rules didn't say otherwise.

Of course, you, The_Real_Review, may be correct, but given the flaws that I saw in the movie executed by MIT I can see how it was possible for a school ranking fourth in the challenges to move up to first place in the overall competition, again, assuming that the movie was true to real life. Regards.

He's a dumbass for jumping to conclusions because he just read the wired article.
Not the book, not the technical reports, not the documentary, and barely any research on the internet as far as I can see.


"I have the higher ground"
"what's that supposed to mean?"

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