[Alpha Beta]

Thursday is in the books.

We've got several catapults, a couple of pneumatic punches, and a dumper in the field. There is even a bot or two who are focusing on defense without any ball manipuation at all. The majority of robots have a shooting wheel of some sort.

Accuracy for most robots was well under 50%, but a few showed great precision. I'm sure this will improve through the weekend. Key shots were a lot more popular than fender shots inspite of the lack of defense.

At least 3 robots controlled the coopertition bridge balls during autonomous. Several others are close to obtaining this feature.

4 or 5 double robot balances on the day. One robot fell over on it's face as the bridge over centered in an additional attempt. No outside the box strategies in this department to report.

Several instances where balls lodged under the coopertition bridge from both sides. I'm having trouble thinking of a technique to dislodge the balls in this scenario with only a 14" appendage. At times there were so many balls on the coopertition bridge that the act of dumping them assured a few went under the bridge. Should be less of a problem as we move to full 3 on 3 matches.

Match schedule is up here: http://www2.usfirst.org/2012comp/eve...eduleQual.html

PS. Our drive team played all of their practice matches without vision assistance. Turns out the camera mounting system presses on the reset button. Inspite of that their accuracy today was impressive. We'll give them back that vision crutch for tomorrow.

Good luck to everyone. If you're a nut or bolt short of a cool idea working, stop by our pit.