Quote:
Originally Posted by Sam Slade
I am, however, a little concerned with what "cheesecaking" may become. Are we going to continue down this path to the point at which a team simply builds three robots and slaps their partners' numbers on them for the match?Again, I am not accusing anyone of doing anything wrong. I am simply wondering what the future holds.
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I can't speak for others, but personally I feel that a lot of the "cheasecaking" had to do with the game this year. We knew on day 1 of build season that the matches would (99% of the time) be decided within the first few seconds by who could grab the cans first.
That being said, we also knew that there was absolutely no way that "can burgler" without the ability to then place the cans on stacks would have let us win the regionals we attend. We made the choice to build the robot we would need to (hopefully) succeed at regionals.
That robot was definitely not up to the task at Championships. Not only was it mechanically flakey (we had to replace the output shafts of the motors nearly every match which involved removing the entire arm. Just ask AndyMark how much we abused their products this year!), but we knew it wasn't fast enough.
Even before knowing which field we were going to be on, we had discussed leaving the arm at home and building something new to put on the robot for Championships. It was eventually decided that we should keep the arm, we wanted to see the autonomous with vision we had worked so hard on.
Overall, I think that there are two main benefits that came out of this.
First, our students were inspired, they got to work with some other teams very closely to accomplish a very very impressive engineering feat.
Second, we got to meet and work with 1114, 148 and 1923. We hope that we will have a lasting relationship with them for years to come. As we continue to grow as a team, having these contacts we can ask for advice and as a guide for how we can help improve our team will be invaluable. I can't wait to see them at worlds next year! Also, meeting Libby was awesome! We are super proud to be part of Team Unither and we hope to grow those bonds and be able to work more closely with them in the future!
Sorry for the long ramble-y post
