robotics is goofy (but not really)

 Original

The night is filled with my confusion,

uncertainty, 

and doubt.


Maybe this?

No, it didn’t work.

That?

Another failed test.


I scrap it all,

Stuck in an endless loop.


Back to square one.

Is this really how I have the most fun?



This poem was pretty negative since it reflects the experience I had debugging my team’s robot code for about twenty hours this past weekend. I’ve been doing robotics for a bit over eight years now, and the word “break” has a very poor image in my head. Seeing your robot break after working tirelessly on it for months (usually in only a few seconds) is one of the most demoralizing things. Here’s a funny (wasn’t funny in the moment, though) GIF of what I mean. 



As much as I hate seeing things fail, I dont think I’d love the activity as much as I do without it. Just like Rosal says a break in some things like dancing is not always a bad thing, there’s so much to learn from each break in the robot. Maybe you have to strengthen this part of the robot or add an optimization to this sequence; there's just so much you can do to make it better, and the "breaks" guide us to these solutions. This revised poem focuses more on the positive aspects of my long debugging (or maybe I’m just coping).


Revised

The night is filled with my confusion.


Maybe this?

No, but I think I understand the problem better.

That?

Nope.


Oh well, what can you do?


I scrap it all,

a fresh beginning.


I may be at square one,

but this is where I have the most fun.

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