Things seem to be running smoothly for the most part at UTC, although I also noticed that there were alot of teams who have been having problems on the first day... my team included. I didn't get to watch many matches at all, but the robot that stands out most in my mind is team 69's robot, which had a very simple yet elegant arm that would cap quickly and easily.
As for my team... it was a mediocre day for us, although certainly not as bad as it could have been. We have been struggling to perfect the design of our hook, and a good portion of my day was spent wrestling with the hacksaw to make new pieces for the hook. I think we are close to getting it to work well, but it is still rather frustrating... by then end of today I was pretty much at the end of my rope.
We have also had some problems with our wheels... we basically chewed up one of the inner tubes of the pneumatic wheels (don't ask me HOW it got off of the rim of the tire and into the sprocket, but it did). We were using low air pressure to let us turn easier, but somehow this caused the tire to be pinched and... it self destructed. I am thinking of keeping the remains of the inner tube as a souvenir
. Anyways, now we are forced to use a higher air pressure in order to prevent this from happening again, but now we are bouncing like CRAZY when we turn. If anyone has any ideas as to how to remedy this problem without lowering the air pressure in the tires, feel free to share them! The bouncing makes me nervous and our robot nearly lost its balance today because of it. Not to mention it creates difficulty when trying to cap.
I hope things go better for us tomorrow... I need to try to keep a positive attitude when things go wrong. A combination of lack of sleep and lack of food made me rather... almost depressed by our performance this first day. I think once we get the hook working better, and we get some more driver practice, things should begin to shape up. I think that we are DEFINITELY not the only team who has been experiencing these difficulties, and I am thankful that it is not worse.
Good luck to all the teams competing at UTC tomorrow, and I hope we can all get our robots up and running!
-- Jaine