[Madman503]

Personally I believe that the minibot is a perfect end game challenge. I don’t think that most teams took the proper amount of time designing the minibot deployment device, or understanding the rules associated with the minibot deployment for that matter.

The team I mentor, 3547, spent more time designing and building a minibot deplorer then any other aspect of the robot. I believe that we only spent $160 on our minibot development, not including the starter kit which we chose for our FIRST Choice parts. Our first minibot took about 2 hrs to build and for the first 2 competitions netted us around 600pts total; it wasn’t fast or special in any way except for being reliable. Once our first set of motors burned up, we replaced the inductor in the motor with wires and used them for testing all of our other minibot developments. As it stands now, our minibot deployment time (clime time included) is between 1.5 and 2 seconds. Also our minibot has deployed 32 out of 35 times. And of those 32 deployments our minibot scored 31 times, often in first place.

It seems like teams are busy trying to make the absolute fastest minibot, instead of the absolute fastest deployment with a respectable minibot. The race is really just about making sure that the other team is NOT first. If you consider that if an alliance has the first and last place minibot they will have scored 40 pts, while the other alliance with 2nd and 3rd place minibot will have scored 35pts. So if you notice, all you have to do is just make sure one of the minibot on your alliance comes in first place and you will always go away with more pts then your opposing alliance. I AM NOT SAYING THAT YOUR MINIBOT HAS TO BE THE FASTEST. I am simply pointing out that if the 3rd robot on your alliance interfered with one of the other minibot during the time that the bases are flashing yellow. That team, most likely will not be able to realign to the pole by the time all the other teams have launched there minibots.

My team successively accomplished this at the Michigan state competition 5 times, without penalties I might add. Often changing the minibot race outcome significantly. In some cases it changed the overall alliances race score from 40 to 35, with the opponent alliance winning. Into 50 to 25, helping our alliance receive an extra 25 pts without ever even touching our minibot pole.

In summary, care in the engineering challenge itself and strategy during the end game are what can really change the outcome of the game. Not that 25 millisecond faster than normal minibot climb time. I have yet to see a minibot race that couldn’t be judged visually. Deployment and driver reaction times are where the races are almost always won and lost.