Talk about change.... my team has had to basically totally change our arm system from our first regional in New Hampshire. We came into New Hampshire suffering from the banebot's flue, having to change the motor that powers our main arm joint to a window motor and a large gas spring. Then we figured out our turret was not necessary for this game, and that our manipulator was not effective enough. So in New Hampshire we worked tirelessly in the machine shop, while we were playing some mean D, to create a new manipulator.
For our second event in Waterloo we had a totally different manipulator, using the power of the roller claw, one which was (arguably) the quickest at sucking up the tubes and turning them onto the rack (and seemed to pop a few too many... sry
). After some consistency issues at Waterloo we made more upgrades on thursday at GTR, finishing in 8/63 and got picked second overall. The new manipulator also won us two technical awards at Waterloo and GTR.
I was very proud of how my team was never satisfied with the quality of our robot, and took the mentality to continually improve it. One thing I have learned from building robots is to never give up on a design, and always strive to make your design more effective for the challenge.