2002 UTC New England Regional video

[Rich Kressly]

I've been promising these for awhile. Old School - no autonomous and Woodie as the emcee! Sorry I don't have more from this event, but hopefully you can get a flavor for how exciting it was from the 121, 69, 103 alliance perspective. Enjoy
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=FIRST+2002+UTC+New+England+Regional&sitesearch=

[Rosiebotboss]

Wow, that brought back memories to Rosie's rookie year. We didn't make it into the finals, but we did come away with the Rookie All Star from that event. Your timing is great because we were cleaning out some old 'stuff' from the shop last week in preparation for build season and found some forgotten video from that year.

[Cory]

I remember a couple years ago the entire elims (possibly the entire regional) was archived on the UTC site. Anyone know if that still exists?

[Rich Kressly]

I remember a couple years ago the entire elims (possibly the entire regional) was archived on the UTC site. Anyone know if that still exists?

I would love to see that too Cory. These were SOAP videos saved by a team parent when I was with 103 and thus, this is all I have. I'd love to see more. There were a lot of high quality teams at the event I'd love to see in action again.

[Cory]

I would love to see that too Cory. These were SOAP videos saved by a team parent when I was with 103 and thus, this is all I have. I'd love to see more. There were a lot of high quality teams at the event I'd love to see in action again.

It was linked somewhere on Delphi, but this may have been like 4 years ago. I'll search around and see if I can find it. I used to have it bookmarked, but I had to get a new hard drive awhile ago.

[Greg Marra]

If someone finds the videos and wants to extrapolate out the teams that played (and maybe even the scores) then I will be glad to post them on The Blue Alliance's site. We don't have much "vintage" footage but I'd love to add more!

[Andy Grady]

Wait...

Is that THE Joe Menassa.com driving the 121 robot???

I do believe that is Joel Johnson on the sticks for RAGE too...

priceless

We need more videos like this out

[Elgin Clock]

I believe one of our team members with a Sony Mavica took a ton of video (useless to us at the time other than for scouting purposes) but now of historical value that I can try to obtain if anyone wants to host them.

They sat in the stands in a high vantage point and took picture after picture, and I believe also a lot of video of the competition.

I'll see what I have in my unnofficial archives of New Haven and other competitions that year, and see what we can do to get it uploaded somewhere.

Let me look to see what I have before I ask anyone to host it, and get back to everyone here.

In the meantime, here's a page with some pics of the field, and the rules of 2002 for everyone's enjoyment.
http://www.team237.com/2002game.html

[KathieK]

Ogre was driving with his arm in a cast... a nice accomplishment I think!

[TD78]

Wait...

Is that THE Joe Menassa.com driving the 121 robot???

I do believe that is Joel Johnson on the sticks for RAGE too...

priceless

We need more videos like this out

Also the same year that THE Ricksta was human player too. Crazy!

I thought we used to have all our matches up on our website, but I only found a few (and they seem to be qual matches): http://www.rhodewarrior.org/video/2002/matches/utc/

[Rich Kressly]

Alright. Since the historians from the Northeast have entered the fray, I have a bunch of great memories about this event. 121's pit was next door to 103's and they had a quite unusual tool with them - a sewing machine if memory serves me correctly. They collected balls with this massive amount of blue fabric. My old team (103) acidentally impaled the fabric in those finals rounds. Thank god the system wasn't running or it'd been a disaster. Here's a visual of the scar for you:
http://www.cybersonics.org/cybersonics/team103/photos/images/UTC2002/DSC00158.jpg

And more 103 photos from the event:
http://www.cybersonics.org/cybersonics/team103/photos/UTC02a.htm

So many great teams will cool ball mechanisms there
Buzz had this huge pneumatic hopper
Grasshopper was ridiculous going down the ball line... on and on
I also had a water bottle dumped in my pants pocket by another team mentor and it looked like I wet myself for at least an hour :)

One question for 121. The female on that drive team, she was really awesome. What ever became of her?

[Andy Grady]

Grasshopper was ridiculous going down the ball line... on and on


To this day, that robot which our scouts dubbed "The Popcorn Popper" because of the sound it made as it collected all of the balls in the line in less than 1 second, still sets the standard for roller pickup mechanisms. It still makes my top 10 list for the best robots ever created.

[Elgin Clock]

To this day, that robot which our scouts dubbed "The Popcorn Popper" because of the sound it made as it collected all of the balls in the line in less than 1 second, still sets the standard for roller pickup mechanisms. It still makes my top 10 list for the best robots ever created.

Well, of all the videos to find from 2002, that was one of them.
http://www.team237.com/gallery/pictures/Videos/2002%20-%2095%20-%20ballrun_short.mpeg

[Jonathan Norris]

ahh what a great simple game, all you had to do was move three mobile goals into a scoring zone and fill them with soccer balls, look at all the amazing robot designs teams came up with! (arguably beatty with the most dominant of all time) Now we got all this silly stuff like autonomous periods. :p

[Kyle Fenton]

One question for 121. The female on that drive team, she was really awesome. What ever became of her?

She is probably one of our biggest success stories of all time. She went to MIT to study aerospace engineering. I don't know where she landed a job, but I am sure she is doing very well.

The 2002 UTC regional was probably the best event in my team's history. It was a shame that most of my video is lost though. I know team 177 had archived the matches on their luxo lamp imac at the event, but I'm sure its long gone by now.

[artdutra04]

I believe one of our team members with a Sony Mavica took a ton of video (useless to us at the time other than for scouting purposes) but now of historical value that I can try to obtain if anyone wants to host them.I have several hundred gigabytes of unused hosting space, along with several terabytes per month of bandwidth at my disposal. :)

One of my long term goals has been to digitize and get lots of Team 228's archived materials up onto our website. Photos were easy, I already have several thousand up there. But as for video, it's been much harder to track those down.

[TD78]

They're only of my team and our finals alliance, but I have all the qualification and elimination matches. I'll see about getting them to Kyle to host on the 121 video website.

[Rich Kressly]

To this day, that robot which our scouts dubbed "The Popcorn Popper" because of the sound it made as it collected all of the balls in the line in less than 1 second, still sets the standard for roller pickup mechanisms. It still makes my top 10 list for the best robots ever created.

Hahaha! That's exactly what we called it too! When I started up 1712 in 2006, we looked to existing designs to help us out. When it came to collecting balls, we went right to the archives to learn about Grasshopper 2002 and even paid homage on the robot: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/22970

[Greg Marra]

The 2002 UTC regional was probably the best event in my team's history. It was a shame that most of my video is lost though. I know team 177 had archived the matches on their luxo lamp imac at the event, but I'm sure its long gone by now.

That iMac is still kicking around our shop and we still use it for video editing from time to time. All the timelapse video we released were recorded on it.

However, I don't think it has the videos on it anymore. It's tight for disk space all the time, and I'm pretty sure it's been cleaned off several times since.

[Rich Kressly]

bonus points to the first one to correctly identify the announcer for the event ... 1.2.3...go!