In 2002-2003, two friends and I teamed up under the name Botzilla for the French "coupe de France de robotique" (French robotic cup) as outsiders, this competition being targeted towards engineer schools and universities. The competition took place at the end of May 2003. Here you'll find some pictures, from our work on the prototype to the competition itself.
For bigger and more technical pictures as well as in-depth details, you may go to our dedicated site here. For 2003 basically here is what it was about: some pucks are randomly placed on the field. This pucks are red on one side, green on the other. They're placed vertically. At the beginning of the match you're given a color, either green or red. Then you have 1'30" to put a maximum of pluck flat on the field with your color upside. You have bonus point if you make stacks of pucks. Your opponent will try to do the same with the other color. That's it.
By the way we ended up with a creditable ranking: 49th out of 144 teams ratified, 158 present.
Our robot was not as glamorous, feature-full and smart as we intended it to be, but it worked, we had fun and learned a few things.
This way to the pics...