WRO '25: The Worst Luck

Here we are again. After the high hopes of my last entry, the competition didn't exactly go to plan. In fact, we couldn't even participate.

We arrived at the venue feeling confident. We had a solid bot, respectable software, and, honestly, the best hardware design of anyone present. We were running LiDAR, something only two other teams decided to do. First on the list was the technical interview, and it went perfectly. The judges were so engaged with our design and software stack that the five minute slot turned into a fifteen minute deep dive. We were on a roll.

Then came the practice rounds. We plugged in the battery and waited for the Raspberry Pi to boot and connect via SSH. Nothing. We tried fifteen different times, forfeiting practice rounds just to troubleshoot. We eventually left the venue early, since Day 1 was only for practice, hoping to fix it at the hotel. We tried everything to get that Pi to connect.

Finally, I tried to read the SD card directly. Nothing on macOS. I swapped to my Linux machine. Still nothing. The SD card was DEAD.

We frantically sourced a new card and spent the night installing Linux and ROS, but then reality hit: I hadn't backed up the final version of our libraries. The only backup I had was a week old, pre dating the final driver fixes. We spent hours trying to rewrite the code from memory, but eventually, the sleep deprivation caught up to us. We had to make the call: it wasn't going to happen.

The next day, we went back to the venue and walked the judges through exactly what happened and what we learned. They were incredibly supportive and clearly loved our hardware, but they confirmed we were no longer eligible to compete. We spent the afternoon in the hotel pool to debrief and try to lift our spirits.

Lessons learned? I’m never trusting a single SD card again. I’m already investigating the failure to ensure this never happens again. I’m even considering running the OS from an external SSD or keeping a dedicated hardware clone for next time.

I was so pumped for this, and the luck just wasn't there. Now, I have exams starting in two weeks. I need to get some sleep, and then it’s straight back to the books.

Sid, signing off.

Picture taken by me at the Hyderbad airport.