Our coach and several members on our team were watching Week 1 matches when we started to realize just how important the bridge was. A bridge could determine who was the winner and who was ranked higher.

Our team ended up adding an "arm" after trying to balance on the bridge we made. It was originally simple with some 80-20 and a doorstop to act as a kind of brake. By the time our design team came up with the idea all the electronics had been placed and we spent some time having to rearrange when everything went since the arm would come down on the power distribution board. This was a few days before bag n tag.

It worked out well at competition and we were satisfied with how the arm worked, but a few students on our team came up with an attachment on the arm (pneumatic) to help us triple balance better (we had five pounds of weight to play with). The idea was good, but when we tried to practice balancing with it it wasn't very effective. I think our drive team used it at competitions, but not as much as we expected.

Overall, I'm glad we made the changes we did, otherwise we probably wouldn't be as successful.