[StephLee]

Our team's favorite stories(I'd nearly bet my life they're unanimous) both involve high speeds and a wall.

Story # 1: We had just gotten the robot to the point where we thought it would drive, so we took it out in the hallway to try it out. (To this day, no one has an answer to my question of WHY we went out into the hallway when our room is about 35 feet wide and the hallway is about 5. Espescially since it's not our school[we're two schools], it's at the local college.) Anyway, everyone had a turn driving it. James took his turn, and he didn't realize how sensitive the KoP joysticks were. He went too fast, realized he was going to hit the corner that jutted out, and for some reason let go of the joysticks. They bounced back and forth, the robot kept moving pretty fast, and when it hit the wall, took a chunk out of the corner. The building was brand-new. Even though James and his dad patched it(the people who run the building still don't know where the hole is), it's still visible.

Story # 2: It was our first test of our autonomous mode, and we were at the local ski lodge(after hours; it was the only place with a large enough carpeted area to practice.) We set up people around the robot since we weren't entirely sure what would happen(again, I'm not sure why we didn't put it up on blocks or something) and turned it on. Apparently, the speed was set at full...it zoomed across the room, nearly decapitated our driver and a mentor before it crashed into a wall. If it had turned another few feet to the left, it would have hit an all-glass wall...a few more feet, and it would have hit the younger sibs of several team members and/or my parents and grandparents...

Apparently our robot has anger issues with walls.