A reliable autonomous for your first year is amazing. Field problems - they happen to everyone. Had we not been having communication problems (which were probably caused by our design) last year, we very well could have made it to elimination matches on Curie.
Competition isn't about the resources you don't have, it's making the most out of what you do have. For the 2010 Season, Metal Mustang Robotics worked out of the wood shop at our high school. No fancy CNC machines, no special lathes, we could only dream about a trailer for competition. If you saw our robot, you'd see that up front for the kicker, we had 2 nice circular pieces. Those were the result of a hand held plasma cutter and 3 days attached to a drill press and holding a angle grinder to the roughly cut piece. Yet working out of a wood shop we went on to create the top scorer and number 1 seed at the Oklahoma Regional. Fast forward to the 2011 season, our team got picked up by the school district and moved to a state of the art facility. But being picked up by the district meant we had to adjust to what else that meant too. We extended our hand to the other schools, helped integrate Team 2334 into our team because their sponsor had stepped down. There were plenty of problems that arose from this but we pushed on. As the season grew, the problems lessened. We became a close nit team. And we went on to be the 8th seed Captain at Greater Kansas City and the 18th seed at Midwest to be picked up by the 6th seed as their first pick.
I whole completely support people's suggestions in going to IRI. I've never been to IRI but I've seen the team list. The teams there are always powerhouses. But they're powerhouses for a reason. There's more to them then just what resources they have or what trophies they've gotten. Talk to the teams about their season. We've all had a rookie season before, some with crazier stories than others. We know what it's like. I'm even recall hearing about a rookie season over the kickoff webcast where they showed up to their competition with the robot completely disassembled in a multitude of Fed-Ex boxes. Get to know veteran teams and they'll show you the ropes.
All in all, keep on trekking. Who knows, maybe next year you'll be waiting in queue for Einstein. There's the drive. Now get your team in gear
