Mock Arenas

[Peter Law]

Hi,

While I was at the London Tech Day I noted that Rob had created some
neat stands for arena markers, which we used to put out an arena
corner. More recently, Andy's report on the Southampton Tech Day [1]
featured a hardboard based mock-up, and the suggestion of using the
actual arenas at Tech Days.

I've been meaning to write about the stands Rob had made for a while,
but had forgotten; thanks to Andy's post for reminding me.

As you can see from the photos [2], they're fairly simply constructed
from some corrugated cardboard sheets. The white bits are paper which
had been glued or double-sided-taped in place (I forget which) to act
as hinges or stops.

The diagonal piece of cardboard is completely removable and just sits
in place. It has room to be removed due to the hole at one end. At its
other end is another chunk of cardboard which had been stuck in place
for it to rest against. From what I recall, that chunk lines up with
the larger hole in the base-plate when the stand is folded.

The other slightly nice feature of these stands is that the markers
are printed (by an external company [3]) on plastic rather than paper.
This means that both the printing is more durable and the markers
themselves are practically impossible to tear.

It seems likely that we'll use similar printing for the competition if
we can, which should also improve the durability of the real arenas.

Thanks,
Peter

[1] "Southampton March Tech Day reflection" on srobo@:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.robotics.srobo.general/6629
[2] http://imgur.com/a/LnOQq
[3] Unfortunately I don't have the details of the printers, though Rob
assured me that they'd be easy to find online.