[falconmaster]

Here is a synopsis of our participation at the AZ Regional.

The MC was great!
Don Knight was fabulous!
The Pits were small and hot, drank many bottles of water!
The field was great!
Pits for the finals in the hallway were extremely cramped, and hot!

Synopsis on this year's 2011 event


4 Falcon Robotics team members recieved W.W. Graingers scholarships, Gerardo Rodriguez, Ramon Balerama, Glenda Maldanado, Mike Kanaly
1 Falcon got Made Dean's List Edwardo Fernandez, now he competes at the championships for the National Title for a scholarship and a person letter of recommendation from Dean Kamen
1 Mentor got the Woody Flowers Award,me, I feel extremely honored
The team won the Innovation in Control Award sponsored by Rockwell Automation for the control and design of their robotic arm.
The team won the robotics competition with their robot Dulce's DREAM with their allaince partners the Beach Bots, from California and RoboKrew from Tolleson HS, in Tolleson, AZ.


Highlights

Team was in 3rd after prelims on Fri
Team had only two practice matches due to redesign issues
Team had to redisign minibot deployment structure due to design error, on Thursday
Team finished 1st at the end of prelims on Sat.
Team had to replace the gripper gearbox with only minutes before the match and was finishing it at the robot was being placed on the field during the last qualifying match.
Team had to replace gripper arm that was broken with only a few minutes during the quarter finals after a robot rammed into its arm.
Team used scouting data to pick the best alliance, had three robots that could hang a tube in autonomous
Team had to go to three matches in semi to move on to final to win.
Team had CNN covering their participation in the event for a documentary about Extracurricular STEM to be aired May 15th!

all in all it was a great event for us! Now on to the Championships!

THIS IS OUR 1ST ROBOTICS WIN EVER!