THOR NC 2016 Preview
 

As we get closer to competition day, I was wondering which teams are competing in THOR this year. Has your team made any improvements to your robot during the offseason? What are your predictions?

Re: THOR NC 2016 Preview
 

We'll be there :D

Currently making improvements, but training our new drivers takes a little higher priority. Hopefully we'll have more reliable ball intake by THOR though.

Is Cortechs making any improvements?

Re: THOR NC 2016 Preview
 

Was registration closed this year, because I never saw a post about it.

Re: THOR NC 2016 Preview
 

Triple Strange will be there. The students have been super motivated and busy. Since playing at Worlds and learning technology that is needed at the level, they have completed vision acquisition and aiming for the high goal. They used that to complete and execute a 20 point autonomous. After tonight's meeting, they should be able to shoot from the outworks safe zone and climb faster as well. They also developed automated ball acquisition that steers and drives swerve into a ball from about 3 feet out. I believe that with a 20 point autonomous and the hang shot, they are shooting for (pun intended) taking down the tower on their own. Very little turnover this year so the drive team is still intact. Looking forward to some competitive and just plain fun play at THOR this year.

Re: THOR NC 2016 Preview
 

How do you guys usually handle drive team selection for off-season events? Is it always the drive team that you that you used in competition (if possible)? Do you keep as many drive team members from competition as you can for off-season?

Re: THOR NC 2016 Preview
 

It moved this year and is being hosted by a different team. Relevant info can be found here:
http://firstnorthcarolina.org/progra...petition/thor/

Apparently registration for teams outside NC started on Aug 1st, but I don't know how they disseminated that info. You could probably email THOR@firstnorthcarolina.org and see if registering is still possible. Only room for 2 teams now. I know registration increases from $300 to $350 on Sept 15th.

Re: THOR NC 2016 Preview
 

For us it's not a hard and fast formula. We take a look at the turnover and pipeline and determine what skills we need to build. Since almost all of last year's team is returning, we are building and cataloging technology, allowing them to fill in the gaps and do the things they either didn't think of or had no time to do during last build and competition season. To test and develop technology, it made sense to eliminate drive team as a variable and use current drive team at THOR. This gives a richer content to the new students who are almost all freshmen and will likely be with us a longer time. If we lost all or most of the drive team like we did before last season, we chose drive team members for THOR from a variety of criteria like interest, commitment and skills measured at practice sessions and team meetings during the summer. If all things go as planned next year, we should also have a clone robot so we can then begin fielding different combinations of drive teams at THOR. It helps to have 2 or 3 functioning robots from different years to allow students to develop the interest and skills to drive, and if you have space, you can makeup challenging mini games that require programmers and drivers to develop skills. Of course when it comes purely to driving skill development, it helps to have a consistent drive train style. We have successfully deployed swerve for the last two seasons and plan to continue that trend.

Re: THOR NC 2016 Preview
 

Do you guys do driving training / mini games over the summer or when school starts again? I'm curious because, with THOR so early this year, we haven't really been able to give rookies much "training" of any kind. Are you guys developing those interests and skills over the summer without new students, or do you recruit new students over the summer?

Re: THOR NC 2016 Preview
 

Ideally during Summer. We had a late start of new recruits this year and not many of them since the roster was so full. Yes THOR is early but fortunately not much training required this year. It's one thing to have a plan...another to respond to timing that's given us. We will continue to develop and practice up to kickoff.

We will have a big turnover next year, so recruiting will have to take place early, perhaps in May. We have less constraint because we are a community team and not locked to a school for recruits or space. We don't have a problem filling the roster and we do meet regularly year round.

Re: THOR NC 2016 Preview
 

Look what we are bringing back. Also we are bringing Black Ice.
Also am looking forward to play with our 2015 winning Thor Alliance and all of our 2016 Alliance Partners. Especially 1533

Re: THOR NC 2016 Preview
 

Will there be a webcast?

Re: THOR NC 2016 Preview
 

Sadly there is not one planned, we just don't have the infrastructure and volunteers for it.

Re: THOR NC 2016 Preview
 

Techno Wolves will also be there. Like other teams, our focus is mainly driver training for students on our 2016 bot. For us, due to the way the school works of many members on the team, we had to limit the old "drive squad" to coaching only and let other members get a chance at driving. We let whoever was interested practice and hope to have finalized selections based upon performance soon this week.

It would also be sweet to have updated scores in TBA for THOR this year. We look forward to meeting all the teams!

Re: THOR NC 2016 Preview
 

The message has been passed along. Does anyone know the formal process for this? We are going to do what we can do make it happen.

Re: THOR NC 2016 Preview
 

This should be an awesome event. 1533 looked ready this weekend!

We will be bringing two robots this time for any rookies (including people not on our team) who want to try out what it will be like on the field. Since half of our team is now rookie, we wanted to build a robot during the off season for THOR and a practice robot using vision tracking before kickoff 2017.

We took apart our 2015 robot and made a robot that can:
Do all of the moving defenses such as drawbridge, sally port, and cheval.(tested successfully)
Hopefully do rough terrain, rock wall, moat, and ramparts. (Untested)
Score High (tested successfully)
Low Goal (not tested but i sure hope so....)

Currently it cannot physically do low bar or climb but if we have time we will implement our backup climber.

Re: THOR NC 2016 Preview
 

Team SPORK is excited to be returning to THOR this year, and this year is going to be awesome! We have made a few modifications to our shooter, which our drive team is practicing with this week before the competition.

587 is (there's also a list on ncfirst website!)- we are trying out new drivers, hopefully this will be seen as an improvement!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Re: THOR NC 2016 Preview
 

Bionic Eagles Team 5279 is excited to attend THOR for the first time. Due to time constraints we won't have our off-season modifications ready in time for THOR, but will roll them out for IROC and Rumble in the Roads.

The majority of our team, including the drive team, graduated last year, so we will be using THOR to test out potential drivers in real game situations. The students that drive the best during qualifications will be our drivers for the duration of eliminations.

THOR looks like it will be a very deep and challenging competition. There should be some exciting eliminations!

Re: THOR NC 2016 Preview
 

I know it's a bit late, but there is a webcast! Link below.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Oa2tDvKJJFk

Re: THOR NC 2016 Preview
 

We had a great time at THOR this year, it was very well run! Congrats to the winning alliance: 2642 Pitt Pirates, 1533 Triple Strange, and 4816 Gadget Girls! Very well deserved, as we experienced ourselves in the quarterfinals.

Re: THOR NC 2016 Preview
 

Congrats to the winning alliance and a solid thrashing! Those last matches were especially hard played. We got to push our robot past it's boundaries and that little bot gave us more than we could have asked it for. As soon as we took the robot down after finals 2, our climber which had been hanging on by one bolt for 4 awesome matches finally collapsed and snapped right off the base of the robot.

Can't wait to do it again next year!

Re: THOR NC 2016 Preview
 

That was a really amazing competition! It was great to see North Carolina back in action and I can't wait for 2017!

Re: THOR NC 2016 Preview
 

SPARKY Team 384 would like to thank NC FIRST, Cary Academy, Referees, Volunteers, FTAs and Field Reset crew for making us feel so welcome. The drive from Richmond Va was long but worth it. We would also like to thank Team 5279 Bionic Eagles (see you guys at IROC), 435 RoboDogs & 3737 Roto Raptors for an awesome run to the semifinals. SPARKY is already looking forward to next year for STEAMWORKS - THOR style.

Re: THOR NC 2016 Preview
 

Huge thanks to Pyrotech and the Roboeagles from the TerrorBytes for joining our alliance at THOR this year. We lost in the quarterfinals, but reuniting Team Phoenix was absolutely worth it. See you next year!

Others, for context: at the NC DCMP, us, Pyrotech, and the Roboeagles made it to the semifinals in the playoffs. It was pretty incredible to play with the same alliance at THOR.

Re: THOR NC 2016 Preview
 

We were blindsided by that 4828 defensive ability! If we had not adjusted our strategy we would have lost very quickly. I honestly think if that alliance had defeated our alliance they could have won THOR with that blocking ability.

Re: THOR NC 2016 Preview
 

Last year at THOR, I was driving on the winning alliance. It was really exciting for my first year of FRC. This year, I was volunteering at THOR with my new team. I am so excited to be a part of Team 900 and I cannot wait to help them build a winning robot. Look forward to seeing all of you at competitions!

Re: THOR NC 2016 Preview
 

Thanks to you guys for picking us and reforming the amazing Team Phoenix with Pyrotech. Hope we reunite in the future?!?!?! #safteyalways

Re: THOR NC 2016 Preview
 

Its an honor to hear those words coming from a team like 3506. Thanks guys!