[jwfoss]

This year at the WPI regional 2168 was going through some rather serious issues with the motor/gearbox setup for their arm assembly. After struggling with this through Thursday and Friday the team made the choice (Friday night after dinner) to completely remove the motor drive and switch to a single pneumatic cylinder to achieve, at a minimum, a stored position and a position required to launch discs in autonomous.

Unfortunately this meant that we spent all morning on Saturday making the changes and dialing in a functional 3 disc autonomous. The parts were supplied by FRC558, hence the use of purple tubing if anyone saw the change. We barely made it out for our last qualification round.

Throughout the regional we had been focusing on defensive driving, and being in picking position at the end of qualification matches came as a surprise. For eliminations we had dialed in the autonomous well enough and it allowed us to support our alliance with some points. We were fortunate enough to assemble a strong alliance based on defensive and smart strategy that ultimately led to the teams first regional win.