I didn't really expect him to do too well since he was built rather last minute with parts from Ziggy that I had lying around my workshop, but he took second place in the full-size category in the Robotics Society of America 2002 Holiday Robot Games and Expo, losing in the final to the reigning champion Beast.

His advancement is even more surprising since I was having trouble with the sonar sensors and Zag kept seeing 'ghosts' that weren't there and was also losing his lock when he was tracking the opponent. I hope to have these problems fixed for his next competition. The sonar guided algorithm is designed to look for the opponent using twin sidewards facing sensors, turn towards it and then bear down on it using the forward facing sensors to target.

My only real goal with this competition was to go up against Beast, which is Carlo Bertocchini's sumo bot and has been the reigning US champion since 1993. When Zag got to meet him in the final I was thrilled, but both the feeling and the match were short-lived as you will see below...

Click on the thumbnails for video from Zag's three matches:
(the first two matches were fairly long so they are viewable as either the full bout or just the last few seconds; the final bout was so short it wasn't worth cutting it down!)