[Patrick Wang]

While I see the delight in speculating what the "all star" or dream team is, I think there should be mention that there is a great deal more than simply "brute force" and strength involved in competiting in any of these competitions.

I would like to bring to example, how far our alliance in Silicon Valley got with three seemingly "underdog" robots.

Take into consideration, teams 115, 376 and 701.

By no means were any of the robots in this alliance, THE strongest, THE fastest, or even THE most effective at picking up balls.

There were no real "specialties" in any of these robots, none the teams could gear switch, none of the teams had a CVT, none of the teams had an anchoring device, none of the teams could grab 2 goals, In fact none of the teams had a tether either!

115 had a 4 motor drive locked in 1 gear and 376 had a ball lawnmower. 701 suffered a broken sprocket in the quarterfinals.

But other than that they were simply your standard joe "robots"

Well you might ask? So what?

The Alliance made it into the Finals, and we were so happy to have made it so far, with so little.

What can you attribute this to?

Teamwork...

Driving...

Communication...

If any of you get a chance to see some of the finals where this alliance played, take a close look, you will see how a few subtle maneuvers would completely take control of the game.

Our realization of the power of WPI, 190's 2 goal locking mechanism is what allowed us to even have a chance against that beast of a machine, (we barely moved the second goal out of their reach at the last second)

A carefully blocked tether also made the difference in the last second.

In the semifinals, we seemingly had lost control of the goals to the other alliance, but one careful pin was all it took to secure the match.

While our seemingly "ragtag" underdog alliance had little chance against the 60/254 alliance, We put up a good match, and at one point had more points.

My point through all this is, as the Art of War proverb says,

"know your opponents"

and

"know yourself"

This is what got a couple of 1 goal grabbing robots all the way to the finals at silicon valley.




-Just as a general disclaimer, I mean no offense to any teams that I did not mention, or does this any any way target any of the posters about any of their teams or robots on the boards. I am merely trying to tell a story of something magical that happened. And give hope to all those "underdogs" out there. There are so many things you can do if you put your mind to it.