[archiver]

Posted by Frank of team #97, Psychedelics, from CRLS sponsored by MIT.

Posted on 4/28/99 2:21 PM MST


In Reply to: a box with wheels posted by Joe Johnson on 4/26/99 8:14 PM MST:



We didn't have the plywood box, but we had some alliances that
couldn't do anything but drive. If I remember right, one (possibly 2)
of our partners were ever able to get on the puck. That severely
limited our ability to score. One round we had a robot that could just
drive around.

I think there should be some way of seeding teams based on performance
in regionals. The teams that did well are rewarded by being paired with
another good team. There were many good teams (WildStang, Bomb Squad,
Beatty, and Delphi to name a few) that we all know are some of the best
teams in the competition that seeded well below many other teams. 540s
were rare especially compared to their frequency in Detroit. It seemed
as if all the good teams had really weak pairings.

Everyone should be able to compete in Nationals though. These robots
take a lot of time and effort (not to mention money) to build and teams
should be able to take them to Disney. But for the students to be
truely impressed as Dean wants, they have to see the big boys..those
teams that bring an excellent robot every year. These are the teams
that inspire. Two of my fellow MIT students
never heard of Bomb Squad until they were walking by their pit and took
a look. My friends were really impressed, but #16 didn't get the big
attention they deserved because they were not in the top of the pack in
seeding.

The competition has never been exactly fair, and it's always tried to
be hard on teams that lose early on (remember last year's bracket), but
this year something really seemed amiss with the final seedings. Just my
two cents on the matter.

Great job everyone! See you next year!

Frank