UTC New England Regional
 

Looks like it will be an interesting competition! What are everybody's thoughts?

This is my team (38) in an interesting position during one of our practice matches-

http://marc.themikecam.com/robot1.jpg

The image is a bit large, and a number of people have requested it for wallpaper, so there it is.

how the hell did that happen

It was pretty fun. Thank goodness to day was just practice cause my team didn't fair to well to begin with but by the end of the practice matchs we were doing a lot better and continued working till about six but the other half of the team drove up on their own and stayed for a while longer. I thought it was a pretty good learning experience for everyone, both the players and judges. Though, there were a few penalties I noticed the judges didnt call they are only volunteers and hopefully by the end everything will run smoothly.

P.S. Was it me or was it fairly quiet, there was no music it seemed?

P.P.S. Come buy raffle tickets and win excellent prizes while helping send a member of 521 to NATIONALS!!!

This is being held in Annapolis correct? Well anyway, if this is the regional I know about in Annapolis, I know our team isn't very loud, because we don't have any of our spiriters there, only the pit crew and a select few. I guess most teams just brough skeleton crews, or what was needed to accomplish anything at this regional.

Um..... No UTC New England Regional is held in Hartford, Connecticut.

This is the New England regionals in Hartford, CT at the Meadows not Annapolis , Maryland. However, the same happened to us we only had 6-7 students there. Our driver, our box operator, our human player, our programer, two- three helpers. Friday and Saturday our cheering squad comes up, a whole 6 more people!!!

We were kind of pushed from the back while the robot was driven in an awkward direction... from the design of our robot it seemed almost impossible for that to happen, and we thought we'd just flip right around the otherside when it did happen, but nope, just sort of teetered there until we took it off.



As for the competition, it's true they weren't calling many penalties. But as a volunteer myself, I did speak with the refs/judges, and they will be calling a lot more tomorrow, particularly with the human players. I'm the only younger male field reset/attendant crew member there, so if anyone wants to say hi, feel free to :D

I was there today, but I didn't watch too many of the actual rounds. Is everything going the same way as it has been at other regionals? how's the stacking (or lack thereof)? Any really cool teams?

I'm sure that a few more posts will beat this question to death but is anyone webcasting this event. I know nasa isn't but it was suggested someone else may. If not is SOAP108 or anyone digitizing and uploading matching in near real-time? A weekend with only 1 regional seems kinda boring.

only thing worth mentioning is 229. they got their robot working finally. and when it works it really works well. ONLY 100% GENIUNE KING OF THE HILL that i have seen this year. their wings are gaint wedges and looks impossible to go over. 905 tried and i stress the word tried. the got beached on the top of a wing for the last minute of the match. after that match a programming mistake made sure 229 didnt move the entire match. cant wait to see them tommorrow. the match were 905 got beached 229 scored a high 220's match bringing them from almost last place to around 20ish. hopefully teams in the top 8 will see how well they work and decide to choose them for an alliance.

I saw how frustated and saddened 229 was after struggling through all sorts of mechanical, electrical and programming problems. John V was telling me early on that it looks like houston will be were they will be fixed. But from that one match, if they can get it working they will be a force to be reckoned with.

Hey Ricksta thanks for the comments. We were so happy to finally see it up there. We think we got all of the mechanical problems out but we will find out for sure tommorrow. We still have three matches left.
As for other teams, 236 is looking impressive just as they were at BAE.
173 is a force to be reckoned with
571 is fast and powerful
230 has a great stacking mechanism that I got to see in the pit. I would love to see it work on the field.
I am very tired right now but there are a lot of other teams the deserve props.

I also like 236. Very robust design, fast, yet powerful. 173 so far seems to have the most successful autonomous program, and 716 looks like a force to be reckoned with. Will definitely be interesting tomorrow to see how it all ends up.

Does anyone else love the "data not available" results at FIRSTs website? Anyone have any data on standings r match results yet?

571 made a stack of 6 which not many teams can do. 236 is consistant as usual.

oh and another thing: moderators need to watch themsleves. three matches resulted in dqs because mentors did stuff they werent supposed to. one match (actually 2 but the refs didnt see it) the mentor from 19 acted as a human player. Then 157's mentor played with the sticks when their robot stopped working.

I remember that. The mentors really need to watch what they're doing. Our coach almost dq-ed us one match when we thought our radio wasn't working but our high-schoolers stopped him in time. Half the time you don't even think about it before fiddling. Something we need to watch for.

I don't know, team 521 looked pretty impresive and confident doing all those donuts in the middleof the field. They're a crazy group, those L33T CREW dudes. You really got to watch out for them!!! They have gone for 37 to 34 tied with 33 in QPs average and I hear tomorrow they get down to business and might even try to go straight!!!!:p

But seriously on a more serious note. Everyone is doing a bang up job and congrats to all. Team 236 is very consistent, 173 always seems to pull through some how, and 155 is doing great

P.S. I would just like to thank all of our alliance partners and all the teams that helped us out with our robot. Through out the day we had been having problems with the driving system. Often times we wern't able to help out our alliance partner as much as we had hoped but they never really got that upset with us and often would swing by the pits later on to see how we were doing and if there was nething they could do. Also I would like to thanks the teams that offered there own oppinion on the matter and willingly got down on there knees to have their own look to see what might be wrong. Sorry, for the inconvience and thanks to all of our (both the L33T CREW and all the teams that helped) hard work, after the awards show our robot was running fairly straight and capable to drop our suction plates and latch on.
Goodluck all and I'll see you in a few hours

donuts can be a powerful thing

Thanks MisterX for saying 155 is doing a great job. It isn't easy doing all that work in the stands or in the pits. As it shouldn't be any surprise to anyone we won the Team Spirit Award (when I say we I mean 155).

To those who can't watch, I'll be "quasi" webcasting it, through a webcam heh. The address is http://marc.themikecam.com

Picture will update every 15 seconds.

Just to let everyone know the Aztechs, Technoticks, and Kilowatz won the UTC regional

a.k.a 157, 236, and 782

yup
 

yup we sure did but all the robots that went up against us put up a great show and all the matches wer close ane non-stop action. what a great regional.

Re: yup
 

I have to totally agree with you there. This regional's finals were soooo intense it was crazy. I was so surprised when the rage and paragon alliance went down. The matches were ridiculously good. I haven't been that excited watching a regionals finals since I first started FIRST in 2000 with my high school team.

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sorry, but I just have to do it just to make sure no rumors go around. The mentor on one team was not the human player. One of the students accidentally put on the mentor pin and the ref noticed. And the other mentor did not touch the joy sticks, he stepped in to driver zone pointed at the controler hitting it with his finger, he was not tring to drive it. Just making things clear.

Re: Re: yup
 

yeah, we accidentally wired one of our motors backwards during a last minute repair right before the match, so we couldn't actually move. Rage was good, but they could only do so much by themselves.

UTC Regional Thanks
 

Team 236, the Techno Ticks (funny dance people), would like to thank our alliance partners team 157 and team 782 for everything. Thanks for the awesome competition and we look forward to seeing everybody in Houston.

TEAM 236, THE TECHNO TICKS!!!

Hey Buzz...

Is that what happened? Well you guys put on a good fight all weekend and I was impressed by your bot, especially your autonomous mode. I could've sworn in one of your matches you hit the wall in about 2 secs. That only happened once, but the rest seemed to be around 3 secs. You guys did a bang up job at UTC. Looking forward to seeing how you do at nationals.

Well... as an unbiased (ha!) crowd member at UTC I have to say that I personally did not even realize that the last match they played was in fact THE last match.... I was up in the 600 section at the meadows, or the nose bleed section if you will, and I did not even realize they were playing the final matches. What threw me off was the fact that the two alliances who played the last match, did not have the usual "come out and shake each other's hand" before their last match... :confused:

Oh well, I watched parts of the match. It was a good one for what I saw of it and overall the competition was a fierce one, as it always is at UTC.

Congrats to all who went and hoping to see the teams who are now qualified to go to the championships in Houston!

For all the other teams who played at UTC and didn't qualify... look at it this way... You now have a start on your fund-raising for next year with all the money you save by not going.. if that is any consolation. :(

See.... I am always looking on the bright side!!! :D

What made me confused was the on saturday, they picked alliances, and then we were right on stage getting ready. what happened to lunch break? And yes, it was a very fast pace competition. We played one match and minutes later we were gettting called to go out again. Maybe to fast, but I think that was part of it beng such a good competition.

The reason that on Saturday there was no real lunch break was because the elimination matches from the morning ran over time so they had to start the finals right away. It was unfortunate for the teams in the finals not to get a break but you do what you got to do.

I want to congratulate teams 236, 782, and 157 at an awesome win at the regional. You guys had awesome robots and deserved to win.

-Thanks Aztechs and Killawatts for being great alliance partners, sick robots, I had a ton of fun with you guys.

-Thanks BUZZ, Aces High and Team 177 for being great opponents. You guys all have awesome robots and most importantly, great attitudes. Can't wait to see you all again at nationals.