[mathking]

We did not win any competitions this year (still have hopes for this summer) but we did build a practice robot for the first time. But as several people have said already, ours was more a prototype robot. It was build from our designs, so it was very similar to our competition robot. Working with that robot we found some of the weak points in our design. We were able to make our conveyor system more reliable and the final robot about 2.5 inches shorter. We also figured out that we needed to flip around a motor and reposition some of our controls slightly. The practice/prototype robot (with our actual shooter, which was designed to be quickly removed and remounted) also allowed us to practice autonomous and practice driving before Queen City and between Queen City and the Championships. We have three working cRIOs and a lot of extra electronics, wheels and hardware from 10 years of competition, so the prototype robot was not a big financial stress. We actually did it because we fell a little short of our goal of attending two regional competitions for the first time ever. As we have a large team it gave more people something to do as well.