[Daniel Bathgate]

Well that was a lot of fun!

A summary of the weekend for 2144:

On Thursday, we only sent 4 students and two mentors. We replaced our 12:1 gearboxes with 9:1s to increase our speed from about 13fps to around 17fps, and replaced our constantly bending Coolie Dualie omni wheels with AndyMark plastic omnis. We had no problems with our drivetrain for the whole competition, while we had to bend the old wheels back into shape after nearly every match at SVR.

On Friday, the rest of the team came and we began the qualifications. A PWM cable came out before the first match, causing us to have 3/4ths of a drivetrain. Our amazing driver was able to control our omnidrive like a tank by only using the good diagonal and made our robot look like it was still fully functional.

Once some hot glue on the PWMs made sure our robot could always drive with all the wheels, the autonomous was able to get three lines in a majority of the matches. We used IR to signal the turns, a simple solution that worked much better than the complicated ultrasonic based autonomous we had previously attempted. However, this did limit us to three lines as the IR would not work all the way across the field and through the plexiglass. We tried to use another alliance partner's robocoach to signal the last turn, but the angle to the IR receiver prevented this from working.

Not being able to signal the robot past the third line became a huge problem when the lane was clear. One of the first times we got 3 lines, the robot got hung up on the center afterwards, coming to a nice stop. Another match, it bumped some other robots on the way and slowed down. But when the lane was clear, it accelerated over the entire length of the field and hit our own alliance's wall traveling at full speed. Even better was that our robot rammed our own driver's station, so we ended up destroying our own joystick and earning a disable for the match. I then changed the speed of robot after its second turn at to what I thought would be a nice leisurely amble across the third line... but the value I picked was reasonable with the old drivetrain. The robot dutifully accelerated to what appeared to observers as full speed and hit our alliance's wall once again, earning another disable and the gift of a yellow card. Our alliance still won that match by the points we earned in autonomous, proving that we couldn't afford to disable the hybrid mode altogether.

Later on Friday, we received the Rockwell Automation Innovation in Control Award for our omnidrive and use of the gyroscope in autonomous, a real surprise to our team.

On Friday, anxious not to be disqualified as we displayed our pretty yellow flag, we started our autonomous by stopping after two lines and slowly worked up to getting the third once again. Our driver continued to play great legal defense, keeping the ball away from hurdlers and decapping at the end of matches. We may have even blocked a hurdle from 1388 with our extended poker stick (whether it would have gone over is arguable, but seeing the ball bounce backwards was really something!)

We ended up the 12th seeded team, and captained the 7th alliance. Together with 1351 (TKO) and 852 (Athenian Robotics Collective), we put on a real fight in the finals. We lost the first match, but with a total of 4 lines in autonomous, defense, Mitty's great hurdling, and the Athenians helping ensure Mitty always had a trackball, we won our second quarterfinal match by a large margin. The third match ended with our alliance losing by a painfully close score of 58 to 56 after a penalty assessed on our alliance.

2551 and 1388 had truly impressive robots that we can't be ashamed to lose to despite as bitter a match ending as close as possible (especially with a penalty) can make someone. Eagle Robotics' hammer was amazing to watch, and the Penguin Empire's robot made their team number seem several thousand too high.

I would like to thank Mitty and the Athenians one more time for being on our alliance. There aren't two teams I would rather have the pleasure of working with. And lastly, congratulations again to 852 on winning the General Motors Industrial Design Award - us getting an award for our omnidrive just didn't feel right with yours in the same competition!