[maverickfan138]

I agree. The endgame is absolutely awesome this year. It flows with the game and it leaves people sitting on the edge of their seats. It's just what an endgame should be.

Team 573 has two minibots this year. Our first minibot was developed during weeks two and three of build season. It was made mainly of Tetrix parts and it vertically clamped to the pole with the help of a trip lever and surgical tubing. It wasn't the lightest(4.5lbs) and it wasn't the fastest(4 second climb), but it was sufficient for our first competition. Our deployment system was basically a cradle on drawer slides pushed by a lead screw. We headed to Waterford and we were finally able to do some real testing with our minibot and deployment system. I can say that our minibot was the reason for our success at Waterford. It climbed the pole 14/16 times, and even though it was slow, it earned us a ton of points. I believe that this is what FIRST intended with the minibot portion of the game.

After scouting more competitions, we realized that our reliable minibot wouldn't be able to compete at later competitions, so we built a new one. It's the standard minibot design now - it has a lexan chassis, two motors direct driving a single shaft, a battery, and two limit switches. We did some slight modification to our deployment, but it worked well on our pole in the room and at the Michigan State Championship, where were finally able to use it. Our new minibot can beat many minibots up the pole. Now our problem is our deployment system. We are fearing that we won't be competitive in the minibot race due to our deployment. We noticed very quickly that our lead screw deployment system took as much time to get the minibot to the pole as it did for the minibot to climb.

FIRST's challenge was to build a minibot that can be deployed to a pole and successfully climb it, and either minibot did just what it was built to do. Both minibots and our deployment were reliable as well.

On the other hand, changing the race to just making it to the top would drastically change the game. It would devalue the minibots and it would add more value to the tube hanging. Also, changing the endgame would eliminate all of the iteration and tweaking that we and many other teams have done. I guess the real question is what is more important, being competitive, or completing the challenge?