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at almost every kickoff meeting Dean Kamen points out that at some point in the next several weeks you might start to think you are involved in some sort of robot building contest
at which point you are in serious trouble.
Things like this (the ramp being slightly different) happen every year - its a part of engineering, it happens in real life too.
It sounds like you had a really awesome robot design concept - I wish I could have seen it. Unfortunately you depended on a very small detail in the ramp specification and it was your undoing. I can think of many things that might have happened to cause you to loose that match (ramp got bent, something caught under your bot, broken container in the wrong place at the wrong time...)
The graceous professionalism that FIRST pleads with us to extend is understanding that mistakes will be made, by us, and by them
the grace part is that we roll with the punches, and dont stop functioning when someone else makes a mistake, or does something wrong.
Everyone at FIRST is doing the best they can - all at their own personal expense of time and energy.
Whenever things like this happen, the best advice I can offer is to take a deep breath, take two steps backwards, and remember that FIRST is not a robot building contest.
The game is not fair, life is not fair, things dont always work out like we planned. I hope that winning and loosing is not the basis on which your sponsors and mentors support the team.
Sounds like you have an excellent team - FIRST events are really MORE exciting when you have many problems to deal with, and your team is spending every available minute in the Pits fixing your bot or making it better - from your post, your team did an excellent job of that - something to be proud of.
and that is where your team really learned what enginnering is all about - take what you have and make the best of it - give it your best shot, solving problems on the fly, thinking on your feet.
thats what your sponsors sent your team to Houston for, not to stack containers or to climb ramps.
And next year you will have learned alot from your experiences, and the experience of all the other teams too.
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