[Alpha Beta]

Team Titanium is very excited to be at The Championship Event for the 2nd year in a row.

Last year we won our first Chairman’s Award at the 10,000 Lakes Regional, and this year we won our first Regional Championship at the North Star Regional with 2667 and 71.

Our programming is entirely student led, and our mechanical design is a tight collaboration between engineering mentors and a dedicated core of students. This is our first year with a swerve drive system. If you are considering this type of drive train for the future come on by the pits and snap some pictures. We have a display model in our pit that anyone can look at even when the robot is not available. We took a ton of pictures at last years Championship Event, and it proved an incredible resource as we designed our own variation. We are thrilled with the results in this year’s game.

The robot has scored 3 from the back or 2 from the mid in auto on multiple occasions. We have auto for the front, but have never found ourselves starting in that position. We are open to the idea if it makes sense for the strategy of our alliance. We cross the bump with a delicate grace, and have a variable kicker capable of blasting through the chains or dribbling a shot up the scoring ramp. We have an effective ball control mechanism on a rocking arm which signals to the driver when a ball has been possessed. The top of our robot effectively dampens the ball coming off of the return rack and efficiently returns it to the playing surface where our ball control and kicking mechanisms can put it on target. We score effectively from all three zones. We play in a wide orientation. There is plenty of video on TBA of both the KC Regional and North Star.

The camera is on board, and software has been written to make use of it, but our drivers have developed enough touch over our 2 regionals to not depend upon this feature.

We choose not to hang this year, thinking that in the time it takes to hang we could surely score an equivalent number of balls. Many times that has turned out to be an accurate assumption for us, although we have been impressed with the speed and consistency with which many teams complete the hang.

Our team has a personal approach to Gracious Professionalism that can be summed up in the following statement.

“Gracious Professionalism: As an individual I will invest in people first, thus forming a team, and as a team we will solve the problems of the day. When the combined efforts of the team create surplus time, knowledge, or perhaps even materials we shall share that with other teams, creating worthy adversaries in the field of competition. If through those contributions to others my team looses I will take pride in knowing I was a part of great ideas coming to fruition. I will expend no energy in trying to make my team appear better by tearing down others, or withholding resources from those in need. If inferior products win because better ideas were suppressed I have done the greater community a terrible disservice. Instead I will learn to be better, and when my team wins I will step up and recognize that it was probably because other people helped us along the way too.”

In this spirit we have used our Guitar Hero Robot to raise some funds with which we have purchased a wide variety of nuts, bolts, and other fasteners to share with other teams. If you find yourself in need of something come on by our pit and we will share what we have. This offer is extended to everyone whether you beat us in a previous round, are a potential alliance partner, or not even on our scouts top 40. We are here to help every robot perform at its best on the field.

It is also within our understanding of Gracious Professionalism to celebrate the accomplishments of others as well as our own. We hope that the best alliance from Curie makes it on to Einstein. We have every intention of being on that alliance. Last year we were shocked in Archimedes when 1114, 2056, and 503 were upset in the semi-finals to (IMHO) a superior strategy. It takes great robots, pit crews, drive teams, scouts, and alliance strategies to win. We plan to bring all of that to the table as well as an intense competitive spirit.

I am thrilled to see this thread turn its focus to the immensely talented and deep field at Curie. Many of you have been an inspiration to our team in person, on the field and through your posts on Chief Delphi. Should you meet us on an opposing alliance you will receive our best effort to maximize our seeding score. And if you meet us in the stands or in the pits we hope to be able to call you friend and colleague and exchange ideas and resources to make both of our teams better.