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Posted by Fran .

Other on team #166, Team Merrimack, from Merrimack High School and Texas Instruments/R.S. Machines.

Posted on 4/2/2000 9:55 AM MST



I too was anxiosly awaiting the Gillette Team 69 and it was so impressive on getting on the bar immediately and sliding
sideways and transfering balls from 1 side to the other BUT after about 3 rounds someone figured out that
you just had to keep them from reach ing the bar first and that severely reduced their effectiveness. Though that long arm
could still reach and remove balls from the floor it was a slower process. They were knocked over several times and righted themselves.

Team 131 CHAOS was even more impressive, they are very fast to pick the balls out of the goals but are extremely fast to move
around, the only real defense against them is to block them from reaching the goals but they are are so fast to backup and move
away that any robot trying this better be fast to switch directions. Our alliance was successful at doing this in 1 round of the the
quarter finals (where we had the 2 lightest robots around...92 lbs and 87lbs). One other note, in 1 semifinal round chaos and its alliance both were knocked over sideways and could not right themselves. I expect to see them up near thetop at nationals.

It was a great feeling for our team to be picked for an alliance...we were all over from 1/2 early to finishing 25 but due to a variety of technical
problems that got worked out along the way. We even sent our base without lift out at one time and still managed to block and knock robots,
we also had lots of speed to get to the other side. We had another round where we successfully kept robots off the ramp.

Well Florida should be even more exciting.

Fran
Techno Insanity #166