Optimization of Eurobot scoring points

Eurobot 2010 is available since yesterday, Saturday September 26th. As I am not really interested in the plot itself, I just started a reflexion concerning the best approach of points with the simple objective of optimized design of the robot.

I considered:
– the total count of scoring items for each kind
– how many points you get per item
– an estimation of the difficulty for each kind
– an estimation of the time to handle each item

The result is in this Excel file : just create a new combination and see the total score, total time and total complexity to be compared to the other combinations.

You can use this file in order to :
– design your robot, taking into account what you can get from your efforts
– test your robot once built, with accurate time for each time

For the moment, combinations of items are entered manually, but since I get some skills in operational research, I will try to use the Solver, a mathematical automation tool in Microsoft Excel to maximize the score and minimize the number of items, the complexity and the total time.

Please give me your feedback and own figures.