[FRC4ME]

On Friday, during our third or fourth match, one of our drivers came back and said the robot felt like it wasn't responding to him for about a quarter second. I thought he was just complaining about acceleration again (it's regolith man; you need friction to accelerate) and didn't think much of it. I wanted to do some run some tests of a new traction control algorithm, but our programming mentor believed the driver and wanted to reseat all of the WAGO connectors.

I had seen this before: I knew there were no wiring problems and, in the stress of competition, blurted out, "NO! I'm not going to let you waste thirty minutes troubleshooting a problem that does not exist. I need the robot to be on so I can test some code!" At this point, the mentor conceded and let me run the tests.

The very next match, during the last ten seconds, the robot completely died on the field. (Fortunately, it died next to our own PS, and didn't affect the outcome of the match.) You should have seen how angry the team was at me (programming mentor: "if you had let me, I could have fixed that problem!") until our drivers came back and said the reason the robot had died is that the Anderson battery connector had popped out after a collision with the wall.

As it turns out, there was no wiring problem. Apologies quickly ensued, and granted, the problem did not affect the outcome of the match, but seriously, could the timing have been any worse?