twoplustwoequalsblog

I think I’m growing tired of this nomenclature for blog entries, so expect more variation in the future.

This weekend the robotics team traveled to Philadelphia, home of a bunch of American history type stuff, to compete in the Philadelphia FIRST Robotics regional, hosted at Drexel University. After having won the UTC New England Regional, I had fair expectations for our machine. We knew it could perform, but would the competition be too much? A less than optimal first day of qualifiers left us 5-3 and facing some stiff competition from some teams with amazing shooters. We were the third picked team, leaving us on an alliance (291, 177, 306) as the only robot capable of scoring in the high goal. My hopes were not high going into the elims; I expected to advance to the semifinals and then get owned by team 365.

However, the fates had something different in the cards. To defend against team 365, who scored from the top of the steeply pitched ramp on the field, you had to get up there, turn sideways, and push them. This proved easier said than done. I didn’t have the friction to turn well, so it took about twenty seconds and two tries to move them, but we managed to hold them in place and with the match by a few points. In the second match, one of our alliance partners did the exact same thing we did the previous match, but better, and prevented their amazing scoring mechanism from getting a chance to get a billion points. I was really happy, because we had won the upset with amazing defense in the semis (gee, sounds a lot like UTC again), so at least we were getting finalist medals.

In the finals, after winning the first match, our robot basically totally broke. Our pneumatics system broke, leaving us completely unable to score and stuck in high gear. Pushing in high gear draws a ton of current, and we tripped the circuit breaker, leaving our bot dead on the field. Unable to fix it during the time out before match three, we had to do what we could, which was play defense and keep the score low enough that our meager offensive would be enough to tip the scales. Despite me driving horribly and almost tipping us (which would have lost the match, and thus the finals) we managed to get on the ramp to end the match, winning the regional!

Now, our team had this “three year cycle” thing going. We did amazingly well, winning regionals, in 1998, 2001, and 2004. Statistically, we should not have done well again until 2007. However, winning two regionals in 2006 completely ruins this theory, and will leave everyone on the team in complete suspense since they won’t know whether they will win or not next year :-p.

Next stop, Atlanta!