Finals day! I really expected to be nothing more than a spectator today so I was pretty excited about the fact that I would be able to run in the finals. No matter what happened, I felt that was a bit of an achievement. Apart from any nervousness, this was a fairly relaxed day. We could concentrate on watching the other contests as they were being run one after another. First up was the robotrace line follower contest…
Sunday crept up on me after another poor night’s sleep. Today was the all-important qualifying contest. In many ways, this was quite a relaxed day. After breakfast we went down to the Capio, got our gear set up and watched the opening ceremony. Once that was done, there was not much else to do except look at robots, watch the other contests and wait for our turn in the qualifying session. With 77 entrants to the expert class, the qualifiers were run on two mazes at the same time…
I didn’t get much sleep at all on my first night in Japan. Or any of the others in fact. Probably over-excited. the view from the hotel room was pretty good what with the rocket, the planetarium and Mt Tsukuba all beautifully lit by the rising sun. Having missed out on the Akihabara experience on the day before, I resolved to take the Tsukuba Express and have a look this morning…
The 2009 All Japan Micromouse contest was held during the weekend of November 21-23 in Tsukuba. I was very fortunate in being able to attend and compete with some of the best mice in the world. This event was combined with the Robotrace line follower contest and the Microclipper event. In case that was not enough, the Tsukuba Challenge real world robot event was held the same weekend.