Robotics Competition Stories!!
 

I'm kind of wondering if there are any teams who would like to share any robotics competition stories/experiences. Anyone have any stories to share? :D

We were at the LA regional in like 7th or 9th place which is pretty good and we had just won our last match with a really high score. We were in our next match and everything was going really well. We had moved a goal into scoring zone and no none touched it. We brought another goal back to fill with balls and started to take it back to the scoring zone when the opposing aliance tried to block us. I Just hit it into full throttle forward and we had like a 20 second pushing match right at the scoring zone line. I pushed it hard right until the end when the buzzer sounded. The goal was clearly 1/8" - 1/4" over the line. Everyone in the audience was screaming for the judges to declare it a score. One judge looked at it, and then called over another judge. Before you knew it all the judges in the arena were huddled over this goal and line. They spent seriously 3 minutes debating over whether it was a score or not. What it came down to is they got something like a piece of cardstock and held it verticle against the edge of the goal. Where it came down on the carpet would determine whether we won or lost. They said we were about half a millimeter short or wining. Somebody must have accidentally kicked the goal into the zero zone while all this was happening. Man was it close. Right when the match was over, I knew we had the win, but the judges have the last word.

yeah, I remember that
 

I remember that match... I was one of the refs. The goal was about 1/16" inch short of being in the scoring zone. We (refs) used an orange right angle square to determine if the goal was in the zone or not. We made sure that no one touched the goal, and it didn't move... it just wasn't quite far enough to be in the scoring zone.

We (refs) made sure that goal position (in or out) was determined before we counted anything else on the field, since we didn't want to alter the position of the goal.

Not only was it really close, we even pulled the coach from the losing alliance onto the field to see that they actually did not score the goal... it really wasn't debatable.

All in all... an exciting and memorable match. That goal was full o' balls, and it would've been another 25+ points for the alliance who came about a millimeter away from winning.

Andy B.

Wow somebody remembers. Sweeet. All the people in the stands swore it was over the line. I didn't go on that side of the field to see it but Ohhhhhh was it close. If I had like another .0001 units of traction. Man, we could have been up like 5 more places in the end if we could have got that one.

<edit>What is traction measured in anyway?</edit>


PS. That FIRST guy at the LA regional with the spikey colored hair is awesome. You know, he was the one getting all the teams pumped up right before their match. Does anyone know him? I talked to him and he is an engineer who was working on a giant telescope revolving door in South America. Now he's working on the capability to duplicate a smell hundreds of thousands of miles away. Cool guy huh?

You'd be talking about Mark Leon, from NASA

great stories.... i just watched this match again because its so great to watch. the second match of finals at battle cry 3, when 121 knocked over rage 173 and pushed them to thier home zone....gotta love it (sorry rage, its just a really awesome match , no hard feelings)

2001 - UTC New England Regional - Finals. It was the first match - (126,177,69,501,175) - We were to go under the bar, grab a big ball, and wait for Gael Force to balance the goals with 69's help. We all did our proper jobs until about 1:10 was left in the match, we knew that we wented to be in the endzone and clocked out by 1:01. We stopped our efforts for putting hte big ball on top of the balanced goal, and booked for the endzone. As we were doing this, my coach said to me, "Drop the ball" - i replied, "no, we might need it later"

As we entered the endzone the bot jerked as we killed the power causing it to lean forward on its front wheels. There was nothing i could do, the power was off. The bot stayed tilted on its front two wheels for what seemed like an eternity, only to fall out of bound. My first thought was that we were screwed, until i realized the robot was not touching the ground, the robot had balanced on the ball which was still firmly grasped in our claw.

The referees could not decide what to do, they did not know whether the bot was counted as "in the endzone" or disqualified for touching outside teh field. they then consulted Dean and Woodie... it puzzled them too. It took them at least 5 minutes to come to a decision... i attached a picture of the robot in fall, and a picture of dean and woodie being completely baffled about what to do.

Tom



The Bobcat Falling...


How We Landed...


Dean and Woodie Confused...

In another match at the June 29 2002 SCRRF Summer Classic we were taking shots into a goal in te middle of the score zone all the way across the field. I'm really not good at basketball but the first shot I took I made. Then my friend took a shot and made that. Those were the only balls we had and we won the match by one point.

At LA, Team 60 I believe was having a problem with their tether/extender thing in one particular match. With like 2 seconds left they kicked it into 2nd gear and high-tailed it back home. The buzzer sounded when they were half-way across the field and they coasted barely the rest of the way into home zone hanging a cool 3 inches over the score line. That's the benifit of an efficient drive train my friends.

Maybe you're thinking of team 691 instead of team 60 (or it coulda happened at both, I wasn't there for the whole LA competition). Our extendor got stuck and we were yelling at our driver to take the robot home and they kept trying and trying to get the tether out. Finally he just turned it all around and barely got the robot back to the homezone. Those robotic competitions sure are nervewracking! I almost had a heart attack (and incase any of you know our school name, I wasn't trying to make a silly pun since we're Hart High)

oops....
 

heres a good one
 

This is more funny than wierd........
Last year we built a mini bot (piger= penguin tiger) and it becmse famous wherever we went, and not to be over zealous but i never saw one that was better.
Any way it was at the great Lakes regional. being our first regional and the fact that we were still building the bot, our release mechanism for the mini bot had not been perfected (it wuld be corrected for the next regional). Wel to make a long story short it kept falling out. In one match against wildstang, it fell out after 30 seconds and was on its own while Frostbite II (our robot) was out delivering a goal. Our skilled driver for piger just kept it moving. Well Wildstang thought it would be a good idea to go sfter piger, along with its ally, so for about a minute 2 130 pound robots chased a 10 pound tethered robot around the field while Frostbite II sat with its goalin position.
Being in the stand myself i was terrified to see piger get cornered, but with 20 seconds to go our driver floored it and piger ran right next to wildstang all the way across the field and scored. (we got revenge on wildstang, later)
In Grand rapids too we deployed piger with only 6 second to go, and it flew across the field but the buzzzer rang and power went dead, because our mini bot is very heavy and has a specially designed wire coil mechnism, it went another three feet on inertia, and the place was quiet for a minute at the camera zoomed in, we had crossed the line with only a small milled nylon stabilising wheel that had just been added, winning teh match by 4 points. God bless momentum

My fav match was our team (384) vs. MOE (365). Once the buzzer rang, we jolted out. MOE let down their wings. We let down ours. Then.... BAM!!!! MOE and Spakry 3.0 hitt the 3 goals and latched on. The goals barely moved. MOE's partner tried to push it, then it got stuck on it's wing! Our partner tried to push us, but then they ran back with only a few secs left. MOE let down their tether. We let down ours. They made did, so did us. 20 vs 10, right? Nope. Durring the match, we used our front-goal pusher to push the goal accadentaly over onto MOE, thus disqualifing them. So 60 vs 0. That was a match. A photo of the match is in the gallery under VCU.

Re: oops....
 

My story is from the 2002 Motorola Midwest Regional, our #3 alliance (269, 93, and 201) made it into to Semi-finals against the #2 alliance (107, 71, and 519). It was the first match with 269 and 201 going against 71 and 519. I went into the match thinking, we have no chance. 71 set up to go for 2 goals, but 201 turned them a bit at the beginning and they were only able to grab 1 goal, but 519 got 2 and took them into the score zone and held them against the rail, 71 pushed the other one up next to those 2. Us and 201 each hooked onto 1 of the goals 519 was holding and just tried anything to get them to move, nothing was doing until there was about :19 left in the match when something just gave, we overcame 519 and pulled the 2 goals and and 519s bot into our homezone with about 3 seconds left in the match. Final Score: 30-14 Everyone just started screaming and jumping, it was the awesomest feeling.......we lost the next 2 semis (we won't talk about that though, darn stupidity) but we went home with 3rd place....was an awesome match

I saw it! We were in the left most bleachers in the front row, and we all saw it, was rather interesting.
:D

At riverage 6, we were up against some teams, and we had a goal with about 9 balls in it. we were defending it, and all of a sudden our driver, tyler, throws the bot into reverse and sticks the goal over the bar. and we let go. the match ended, and the judges and refs could not decide wether we won or not, because we "damaged the bar", all in all we won that match, and was told by Mr. kelso to NOT do it again (dont worry, wee wont:))


Badjokeguy

How about the match at 2002 Nationals where it came down to a coin toss and the coin ended up leaning against I think a tether so one of the teams wanted another toss but the refs gave it to the other team (#'s can't remember) it would suck to lose by a coint toss after something like 5 other methods still resulted in a tie (# robots, goals, balls, even balls on the field!)

Wow

Robotics Stories
 

The year 2000......... the place Hartford, CT. The final match for the NE regional championship was just amazing. CHAOS had to steal that last black ball out of the other alliances trough. They did with a few seconds left in the match, and won the NE Regional. Simply perfect! Nationals.......... thats another story for another day. 2000 WHAT A GREAT SEASON!!!!!!!!

Chief Delphi did the same at Great Lakes in 2000, that was the most amazing robot I had ever seen.

i remember that, and at utc new england one of the judges got a coin from woodie and started to explain how it would work, if you go through all the tie breakers because they had a really hard match to decide there

2001 UTC New England Regionals
 

i was a freshmen driver for my team. My drive team was scheduled to drive for my teams last qualifying match. The match before that we were in our front left wheel had broken off (this had happened the day before,which was friday). The wheel mount physically broke in half. ANyways, they reattaced the freshly welded wheel mount. Apparently theweld was still hot, so they had me drive using our robots back end as our front, so all the controls were reversed. Then our battery kept cutting out on us in the worst possible location (so that we were blocking the path to get up the bridge). Not fun

2000 Motorola Midwest
 

The year 2000, the regional: Motorola Midwest, the teams: 45, 47, 111 all on an alliance in the finals. After going through the bracket we make it to the end and come out as the winners. I tell ya what, that event alone left a big impact in my future FIRST "career"...

:)

The year: 2002... the end :D

In Seattle our robot started smoking...like as in smoke coming from the robot because tape was burning. That definately was not good and do you know how many jokes we got about it, especially since our team name was Hart Burn?

Hehe this was our first match last year. It was funny as hell.:) It started off with our robot falling over backwards. Whoops.. two years in a row that happened. As it turns out the other team thinking they actually won the thing started helping our score out so that they'd get a pretty decent score. As it turns out we fell backwards into the scoring zone so we had actually one by I think a few points. Thats got to be the luckiest thing to happen ever to anyone.

2001 MMR... We wernt doing well at all in the competition and we had turned off our power and the air in the acumalator(sp?) went into the cylinders for the arm and it hit 2 liquid crystal clocks off. We were lucky they didnt DQ us for that one. Looking back to it was kinda funny.

scariest moment ever
 

This year we won nationals, but it was a fight. Our alliance was perfect, it was funny i studied 71 for its previous regionals and knew its flaws, little did i know they would be partners for national championships.

Anyway there are two scary moments in divisionals and chanpionships. The first came in the first match of divisionals, against the 8th seed should of been a pushover, but when beatty fell, it fell wrong the most horrible thing i could imagine. We lost our first match against the 8th seed.

The second disaster was in the last bracket of national champs, beatty went out with 173 and something happened on its fall, but when it came back to the little pit behind the field i noticed that its wheel had sheered off. We and 173 had to do it alone (god bless the ballers)

My story comes from nationals in the archemedies division. Our strategy guy, Rick, had told everyone that we were going to get a 190pt match next. No one really believed him but he claimed to have it planned out so perfectly that it would not fail. We went into the match knowing we had to give ourselves a score in the high 60's and give our opposing alliance a score in the lower 60's. Towards the end of the match we noticed that our opposing alliance had not scored enough and that we had 76 points. So we moved our robot into the opposite home zone to try to give ourselves a decent multiplier. The match ended and we were not too happy because the opposing alliance did not have many points. When the announcer came on with the score you could tell that something was going on. No one had actually noticed..except for the refs (thank God) that one of the opposing robots had let out a tether under a goal at one point during the match. Thus they were disqualifed. My team was not really expecting to get the 190pt match that Rick had actually planned. But we did..the highest score ever..198pts. And to think, we gave away points during the match..if we had only known.

I went crazy!

during a match at kennedy space center in 2001. 234 was on the ramp when another robot came behind us and hit our robot. our battery dislodged and fell off of our robot into theirs. so we dont have power and are right in the way because the ramp was really the only way to go unless you were small enough to fit under those bars. but the same robot then came at full speed, or something close to it, and rammed us off of the ramp right on to our grabbers on the left side of the ramp. we all thought that we were broken after that.

jessi

Here's one
 

OK, I've got a lot of these... but here is one:

It's 1998, at the Nationals. I think that the elimination rounds are just beginning. We were on stage at Einstein, getting ready for a match against team 65, the Huskie Brigade.

Right before our match started, a TechnoKat 8th grader ran up to our drive team and said:

"Watch their human player. He will try to knock hit your ball out of the middle scoring zone right when you put it in there... fake putting it in there, so he throws his ball away."

This 8th grader was very excited that he found this news out... the drive team acted like it was no big deal and said "yeah, thanks."

So... we get into the match, and we get a ball ready to score into the middle scoring zone. Our arm operator started to roll out the ball to let it go... but he faked letting it go and rolled it back into the gripper. Right before he rolled it back, the Huskie HP threw his ball hard, right at where we were scoring our ball.

After the Huskie ball flew over the top of the middle scoring zone, our operator calmly scored the ball.

The match was close, and we won. We have been using this example on the importance of scouting ever since '98. Of course, we made a big deal about how important that information was and gave alot of credit to the 8th grader who found it out.

Andy B.

It's 2000, in New Jersey.

We're down be a few points. That was the year if you suspend yourself from a center bar, you scored 10 points.

The opposing team had locked onto the bar, and they were blocking the whole bar.

It was put up or shut up time. We back'd up, and went forward at full ramming speed!

Wonder of wonders, we actually lifted them enough to knock them off the Bar, and clamp ourself onto the bar with just one or two seconds left.

We got best play of the day for that one.

Too bad I don't have a picture of it. :-(

It's hard to pick one. We've always had great years, and great moments. 1999, doing a perfect score and having the #1 seed.
1998, our Main gear snapping at Rumble at the Rock, and sending us crashing down!

1997,was a great year. We had the highest score at any competition!
We lost the the New jersey regional by a matter of 1/16th of an inch. They ended up pulling Woodie onto the field to make the final call, cause nobody wanted to do it.

It's the wfinals at Rumber at the Rock 1997. That year, Team 121 made it there stragegy to flip every team over, usually breaking the robot in the process. (Nope, we're not bitter)

the first round, team 121 skipped grabbing tubes, and went for us. We were on the goal at that point, fully extended, but we hadn't locked on yet, they got under us and flipped us with there spatula. SMASH our main arm was in two pieces from the impact. two time outs later (Thanks again Gael Force for loaning us yours), One minute Expoxy, and some band-aids, we had managed to glue it back together. . The second round,

We make a quick grab for 4 tubes, and again go for the goal. Again, team 121 got under us, and flipped us again. This time, it's in 4 peices. There isn't enough time, and glue to put it back together.

It's very hard, but try to imagine being faced with a descision. We had to rip our main arm off our robot. Ouch. we try'd to compete, to try and keep them from scoring, but it's hard when your only a moving box.

year 2002.
Qualification match at UTC regional.

we get one goal and we position ourselves in the scoring position. 20 seconds left in the match. 716 is trying to steal the goal from us... our claw comes out and 716 keeps trying to steal our goal. 10 seconds left, 716 tries to rush into the end zone...we try to block them; the match ends. A small wire of our robot was touching the white line and the ref says that counts and they give them the 10 points. we tie 30-30, but we still win the match (we had more balls). pretty crazy.

the year: 2001
the competition: second annual WRRF cal games
within the alliance, the plan is that our robot will cross the bridge first, go to the end zone, and get a goal ready to balance. another team, able to reset the bridge, will follow us and sit in the end zone. somehow, Vulcan got to the end of the bridge, and then backed up, forward, back, forward, back *crash* *crash* as the bridge hits the floor of the gym at Evergreen community college, and the robot that's supposed to follow us, which has somehow driven under the alliance side of the bridge :-D what was the driver thinking? i have no idea. maybe he panicked when he could no longer see the robot from the alliance station? or maybe our gyro chip decided to kick in? who knows...

a couple matches later...
we're supposed to be the first robot over the bridge, in tandem with another. the (same) driver i guess hit the trigger on the joystick, and the pneumatics of our bridge resetter actuated, hitting the ground, then released, rising back into its initial position. within this second, the driver positioned the robot such that the resetter was actually under the edge of the bridge...of course, since the view from the alliance stations aren't that great, this was un noticed until the resetter released, completely removing the bridge from the 4x6 on which it rested! NO robots made it over in that match...and i don't imagine that we were very popular with the other teams :-D

ALright i got one here. Its the 2000 Midwest Regional. Im a sophomore and pumped up about my first match driving ever, except i have an unknown surprise waiting for me. Over the day on Practice Day we had been making adjustments to the drive and at somepoint had disconnected the the motors for some reason. Well something happened to one when they reconnected them. Well, unknown to anyone the match started, and all of a sudden TOBOR III was doing doughnuts for some unbegotten reason. Well after about 30 seconds of looking over the joysticks and connections and practically making a mess of myself, i dicovered that by running the joysticks oppisite of each other the robot would go staight. Well after manuevering under the bar i was able to bring the robot up the ramp and hang from the bar to score the 10 points, even though we still did lose the match. Regardless, it was determined a motor was wired backwards causing one joystick to have its controls reversed, and I impressed everyone by getting to the bar, and had a most stressing but fun introduction to the world of Driving for FIRST.
I Have many more stories about matches if anyone wants to hear some more( ie. "winning" the play of the day award MMR 2002, I Believe a guy named Baker called that almost immediately after the match).

Some of the best storys happen after the competition part of the day is over...

Hotel+college students+bucket of water+second floor+wet Dave+Dave's revenge=great story

Stop by
Tigerbolt Chat, be warned, it can be nuts most of the time.:D


Wetzel
~~~~~~~~~~~
Lazy Bum
H:\Limp Bizkit\Limp Bizkit - Faith.mp3

better
 

High school students- hotel- appoxy- mountain dew- window - 6th story---------------------- video tape.........................

Hell yeah!!
but i got another one also:

Way back in 1999: the year of the floppy, my first year. Rage had our trademarked arm, as always, i was a rookie arm driver, and we we average. In the best match we had that year i don't even remember the score. Anyways, it goes like this.
We were against some team with a big basket that was made of some sort of wires or tubing for walls. The game progressed, and it came down to the final thirty seconds or so. Everyone prepared for lifting their baskets of floppies up. As we lifted ours up in the last few seconds, the basket got caught in the other teams wire basket thing. Me being a freshman, not knowing rules too well, and being really aggresive, started prying our basket out of theirs. Exactly how i don't know, but it ended up with me knocking the other robot over. It didn't just fall though, it fell, hit the outside pipe border, and smacked the top of one of the camera men's cameras, and knocked him over.
i believe i saw his video later, and it was the funniest video ever. A regular match then some sort of problem, you couldn't tell from the angle, and then smack the camera just whacked and it was then filming the floor.
Good times.

Story 2:
"KILL THAT GOAL!!! KILL THAT GOAL!!!''
there's probly 6 people who know what that means, but it was the best moment i've had in four years

Oh... so many to choose from that I don't know where to start. One that will live on for ever:

Nationals 2002... Newton Division.... my team (84) had been dreading a match against MOE since the day we heard they were in our division. Finally, on day three of competition, or last match would become a nightmare. When we found out that we would be against MOE, myself, the other driver, and our coach immediately started planning and stratezizing. However, as usual, every thing you plan for does not happen, and something else totaly different occurs. I can't remember who we were with, but MOE was with 710.... the match began, we went out in high gear, and went straight for MOE's armpit. It was almost a complee deadlock in the middle of the field. Come to find out when we hit MOE, we jumped thier arm, and were on top of it. They had two goals barely in, we continued all efforts to push them out. The match ended, and we had no idea if the goals were over or not. Myself, the other driver, and our coach stood nervously with our alliance partners on the sidelines. It took a very long time for the judges/refs to call the match. When it was finally announced, MOE had been disqualified. Eventhough, we did not complete our task, we were able to meet up with them later at the PA Robot Challenge, and succeed at what we wanted to do.

*I attached a photo that captured the moment at Nationals. Our floor team and our alliance's floor team are overlooking the field, while on the right hand side, Chuck sits atop MOE's arm.

Yup. Share these kind of stories too!:D

Since it was such a big topic on here, I think everyone will know what I am talking about(ahhheeemmm, RICK). The best match ever happened at Battlecry III in the finals.

Hilarious match stories
 

I have a LOT of good ones from two years ago. The game with the balancing of the two goals.

First ff, I was on team 249 and that year I was the driver of the component on our robot that lifted the goal. (Yeah we were successful at lifting a 73 lb goal at the front of the robot. We came in 2nd at Nationals in the Archimedes Division that year!)

Anyway, what happened was our strategy was to grab a goal while one of our alliance partners grabbed the other one. The alliance partner would then have to drive up one side of the ramp first (robot in middle of ramp, goal on outside) so this would cause one side of the ramp to be down and the other side to be up. The side that was up would be the side my team was on with the goal. You see, our robot had these monster wheels with great traction! And so the height of them were just enough so that when the ramp came down, the end would sit on our wheels. So the game starategy was the robot would be on the teter totter thingie (balancer/ramp) and we would be on the other side with the goal in the air. Just high enough so that we could go forward, and sit the goal on the ramp. As we sat the goal down, the balance ramp would come down on that end and sit on our whels. As soon as it touched our wheels, we released the goal and drove backwards into the scoring zone. And it worked most of the time. A few times we had roblems with the hook unlatching. But it worked a lot in Nationals. Anyway, as the ramp was coming down, the other team panicked and thoht we needed room and drove back. But they drove back too far and decided to drive back forward really quickly. WEll, the result of that was they hit the goal that we were sitting on the ramp, knocked it forward and it fell the long way on the ramp. The thing about it is, it still balnced! It was a great site! We didn't get the score for balancing though cause it was supported by the metal bar. But it was still a great match!!!!

another good story!!!!!!!
 

Robot game year - 2001 Goal/ramp/balancing

Let's just say when we lifted the goal to be set on the ramp, the driver wasn't all the way forward as he should have been and therefore, when we drove backwards (the ramp was sitting on our wheels) the goal wasn't on the ramp far enough and it fell. luckily the alliance partner pulled forward as SOON as they saw it dropping and SAVED THE DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hmm..last year at the Motorola Regionals, during one of the seeding matches, our robot got into a tug of war with another robot (honestly can't remember which...) Two tug of wars, actually, since both bots could grab two goals. Well...our robot ended up being pushed against the side rail, and somehow drove over some balls so that it was only on one wheel (the wheel against the side rail). Despite this, the other robot STILL couldn't take the goals from us! It was awesome!

OKAY NEW TEAM, NEW FUNNY STORY
 

Team 830 GO RAT PACK!!!!!!!



An engineer, a rookie of course, made a bet with me that the robot would NOT weigh over 130 lbs. Of course, I'm gonna take this bet because I'm a veteran robotics girl and i know good and well the robot will weigh over 130. (Especially since he was dead set on puttin all these steel parts on the robot, one of which was a HUGE steel bumper.) SO anyway., for every pound overweight we are, that's the dollar amoount of dinner that he owed me. So it turns out we are like 30 or 40 lbs overweight, a $40 dinner for me! Yay for me!!!!!!! Of course that bumper comes to be named - yes you got it - Veronica's dinner.


Oh yeah and at dinner, the most hilarious phone prank ever. On the guy sitting a few chairs from me at the table! HIlarious!!!!!!!!!

last year
 

We got stuck up against two robots in st. louis cause or alliance was dead, and actually won with a qf score of 90.

Super Comeback
 

This happened when I was a freshman back in 2000 at the J&J mid-atlantic regional. We started off with two-wheel drive tank steering, which we had never tested on the carpet. In our first few practice matches, it didn't work. We could go forward, but we couldn't turn, and when we tried to turn, our traction caused us to nearly rip up the carpet. The judges told us we had to do something about it or we would be disqualified for damaging the field.

We removed the treads on the non-drive wheels. Now we didn't rip up the carpet anymore, but we were not maneuverable at all, and we lost our first several matches. By the end of the first day, we were close to dead last place.

The nexy day, someone realized that we needed to replace our non-drive wheels with casters. But where do we get casters? We checked small parts, but they didn't have any. Finally, someone came up with a brilliant idea: our CART had casters. So we traded casters for wheels. Now, instead of a non-turning robot and a maneuverable cart, we had a turning robot and a non-turning cart.

It then became clear that we were amazingly fast. We consistently beat our opponents to the opposite side of the field to grab both black balls. In one match we went from 34th seed to 19th seed. We slowly climbed up the rankings.

For our last qualifying match, we knew that ChiefDelphi was going to be one of the robots. We all hoped that they would be our partner, because they had an amazing robot. When the alliance was announced, we were disappointed to learn that we were going to be on opposing alliances. We all thought we were going to lose. 5 seconds before the end of the match, the ChiefDelphi alliance was barely ahead of us. Both of their robots were hanging from the bar. We flew up the ramp and slammed into CD's partner. It started swinging back and forth on the bar, then FELL. But now it was on the ramp, which still counted for 5 points and would have won the match. But their robot was top-heavy and had a stabilizing wheel on the back, which at the end of the match was touching the ground off the ramp, so they didn't get the 5 points, and we won the match.

We made it into elims and won the regional, then won the Philadelphia regional the next week.

So much fun to go from dead last to first place :P

In Sacramento the team next to us in the pits was 295, they're so kool. Out of all their matches they only lost 3 and one of them was to us (133 to 37). I just think it's great that we beat such an awesome team.

MY Story is how at the KSC regional last year i got locked out of my hotel room and broke the window and had to be rushed to the hospital for 23 staples and having to spend the saturday of the comp in a wheel chair









Beat That
:D

We had a similar problem to this where when I would drive forward with the joystick the corect wheel would go forward, however if I moved the left joystick backwards, the right wheel would go backwards and if I moved the right stick backwards, the left wheel would go backwards. Being the programmer as well, I thought it was something wrong with the program. I spent over an hour looking at code trying to figure it out before I discovered that each of the two drive motors have been wired to two different Victors.

Yup I'll say it
The Year 2002
RiverRage 6 Final
Ask someone on 121 what happened cuse they still don't know;)

we were playing mafia friday night in sacramento at the hotel, and i was mafia, but i forgot, so when she said "Mafia, wake up." I just sorta sat there until she tapped me and i got up and said "Oh... Yeah."

and then everyone smacked me for screwing up the game

and then we went back to leann's room and had a giant pillowfight. was fun :D

Of course we coughKylecough would never solder things in a hotel room.

:rolleyes:


Wetzel
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Oh yeah...the smoke detector...

Slept in til 4:45 AM the Sunday my team was suppose to leave Houston to go back to Michigan... Almost didn't make it to the airport cuz I almost missed the bus...once I got there, I was really hungry so I grabbed some stuff from a store. I thought I heard something about a final boarding at gate A25 but I ignored it. I hung out with 4 other team members who apparently didn't hear the announcement either.
Then they were like,
'what time is it? We board at 6:30...our flight leaves pretty soon...Jason?'
'Uh yeah...it's...7AM...'
Well, needless to say, we sprinted to our gate and made it :p
The moral: Boarding time over your stomach :)

LA regional this year- we're coming down the ram with our arm raised when a wedge shaped robot runs into us head on. Our driver made the mistake of continuing forward, and because our arm was raised and we were on the ramp we tipped over onto our arm. Fortunately we designed for this contingency, so our arm is hinged from the side of the robot it has sufficient toruqe to put us back on our wheels. And it did just that, even though we were flat on our back, wheels pointing directly upwards, our chassis cranked itself right back up and as it passsed vertical it fell onto the wheels.

What we didn't know until after the match was that our battery had come out of its mount, for most teams this would mean that the battery would be disconnected as soon as they moved, but we were able to finish the match dragging our battery along behind us by its leads because we had a zip-tied the two connectors together. In the video we took you can even see that another robot drove over our battery at one point. It was crazy cool, but not very good for the robot, because the battery smashed the plastic housing of one of our drill motors as it bounced around underneath our robot at one point.

Needless to say, after that we abandoned the practice of using velcro to hold the battery in, building a new mount in the ten or so minutes before the next match.