Wisconsin Recap

[CrashTestPilot]

Here is another video. Move to 1:30 to see start of the match.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgQ4cFvoySY

[J-Blondie]

Congrats to everyone this weekend! A lot of great teams, a great winning alliance, deserving teams of other awards and a lot of competition. Team 2194, Fondy Fire, looks forward to playing with some of you at Midwest and the Championships!!! Great work everyone, you should all be proud of what you have accomplished this year. I love seeing teams that continue to improve year after year and I love seeing how you all addressed this year's game. So many different robot designs this year, unlike some past years where there were only a few good options for approaching the task. One of my favorite robots that climbed was Cybertooth from Kokomo, IN. A purple robot and an interesting approach to climbing, definitely an amazing thing to watch, even if the rankings didn't give them the best outcome for the weekend.

[MisterG]

So many great teams with so many great robots.

I was really impressed by how many of the Milwaukee metro teams represented this year: Charger, BEARS, Paradigm, Cyberhawks, Cooney, Laser, B'East, MORE and of course Hilltoppers. You guys rocked it.

Great to see some rookie teams debut. STEMpunks were awesome and FEAR has lots of potential.

Super cool to have Bomb Squad make the trip.

[driveman]

This is my first year as a mentor. I was selected by the other mentors of our team to be the lead mentor for FIRST Team 3692 Rock 'N' Robots. We are from Janesville, Wisconsin in Rock County. This is our third year, and the team performed to its fullest. The mentors on our team let the students do the planning, design and implementation. We were there for answering questions or questioning them. We also made sure the students performed the work safely. We were anxious to go to the Wisconsin regional competition.
Thursday and Friday the students practiced and fine tuned the robot. It was exhilarating to watch them. One of their main objectives was to perfect the autonomous shooting. The shooter was the best in their eyes. Competition proved this out.
Our drivers were very cognizant of their performance on the course. They maintained their poise and drove the robot respectively. The team was rather distraught when the robot was hit by another going full speed with full intent on knocking Rock 'N' Robots 3692 out of the game. The impact dislodged four of the spring clips that secured the bumper. These clips are used on agricultural equipment. Also a wheel was broken. This was a blatant hit to take the robot out. The strategy did not work because the students were determined to come back. They did.
FIRST Team 3692 Rock 'N' Robots did not give up. We came back and finished in first place out of fifty seven teams. We were first seed. Not bad for a young team and simple robot.
Our autonomous shooting was very accurate and repeatable. Our shooter performed very well. This became apparent to the competing teams and here in my view the gracious professionalism ceased to exist. The theme to me appeared to be to do anything to survive.
Saturday became a totally different atmosphere. It was do at all costs or die. I may be wrong but it appeared by all the postings in the pit that the older teams dominate. They know the politics.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Thanks for all the kind words for WildStang in the previous posts but I need to remind everyone we had great partners and superior teams to play with and against. We could not have done it without all the work from 1732 and 2338, we were simply a great team and worked very well together. Thanks to some of the other teams for knocking out some of the tougher teams we would have faced in the later matches. Congratulations to all the teams that received awards this weekend, especially Chairman's, and the rookie awards. I hope you enjoyed your first FRC weekend.

[wesbass23]

Originally Posted by driveman

The team was rather distraught when the robot was hit by another going full speed with full intent on knocking Rock 'N' Robots 3692 out of the game.

I am curious if you have video of this match? Sometimes tough defense can be mistaken for malicious behavior, and I would like to believe no one would purposely try and break your robot.

[driveman]

I have to say congratulations to all the teams that were at the Wisconsin Regional. Congratulations to the teams that won the awards. Congratulations to the winning teams going to World Championship. Show them what the Midwest can produce.
I was amazed at the variety of robot designs from a simple kit of parts. There were some powerful drivetrains and shooters. It was good to see the students have so much energy and enthusiasm. in a way I think the competition sometimes overshadowed what FRC is about. The event started to take on the image of a NASCAR race. However, I truly enjoyed it.
Our FIRST Team 3692 Rock 'N' Robots can't wait until next year. The students are already planning on how to improve our pit gear and other support material.
Any ideas on what the next robot design may be?

[themagic8ball]

I just wanted to forward my congratulations from Team 537 to the winners of the regional, Chairman's, and all of the rookie awards. Seeing alliance #2 and #4 come together you knew they were going to be tough to beat and congrats to both of them.

To teams 2077 and 2202, it was a pleasure to be on an alliance with you both. We wished that we could have been more effective in QF match 2, but our power distribution board fried and we lost all comms. Wish you both well in your future endeavors.

It is certainly exciting to see our hometown regional get more competitive each year. The regional is run very well and it is fun to see all the teams that were rookies when I started with 537 "grow up" to where they are today. Bonus thanks for 16 for making the trip up!

[driveman]

Originally Posted by wesbass23

I am curious if you have video of this match? Sometimes tough defense can be mistaken for malicious behavior, and I would like to believe no one would purposely try and break your robot.

I would like to believe that also. Some of the robots were tuned pretty hot and you could see that when they were in the loading area. It could have been that type of situation where the robot was tuned for response and not stability and it appeared to be a malicious hit. However, it was still amazing to me to see all the varieties of robots and the super high enthusiasm of the teams.

[Icewolfwi]

Originally Posted by wesbass23

I am curious if you have video of this match? Sometimes tough defense can be mistaken for malicious behavior, and I would like to believe no one would purposely try and break your robot.

If I knew the match number in question, I could find it in the PlayOn! archive mentioned upthread. We probably will be getting the individual matches from there cut as highlights after Midwest, but we can get some of them up earlier if people are interested.

[~Cory~]

First, I would like to thank 4143 and 16. You guys were awesome and great partners. The students and mentors on the Bomb Squad are some of the most humble and inspiring people I have ever met. To 4143, all I can say is that the third time is going to be the charm

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@driveman

I usually let this kind of post competition complaining pass by, but I feel as if the above posts warrant a response.

Originally Posted by driveman

This became apparent to the competing teams and here in my view the gracious professionalism ceased to exist. The theme to me appeared to be to do anything to survive.
Saturday became a totally different atmosphere. It was do at all costs or die. I may be wrong but it appeared by all the postings in the pit that the older teams dominate. They know the politics.

FRC is a competition. You need to be competitive to win a competition!

Malicious behavior is nearly impossible to pull off without an inspector or referee interfering. Don't blame bad robot design decisions or poor manufacturing techniques on another team. Take a look at 2481 (arguably the best team at Wisco). They were tipped and they are not complaining.

Data can talk for itself in regards to your robot's shooter's performance (http://www.frcminer.com/e/wimi ). It is well known that qualification rank is only important for alliance selection order and does not represent a robot's actual ability. This is why teams scout, instead of just picking the next best ranking team. There was a 7 way tie for first and another 7 way tie for second at WI this year. For a majority of teams at WI, placing was a matter of luck (No really strong auto robots). If a team was to be intentionally damaged, it would have been 2826, 111 or 1732. I don't mean to call your team out on this, but I think you need to take a step back look at what really went down.

[Chris is me]

Our drivers were very cognizant of their performance on the course. They maintained their poise and drove the robot respectively. The team was rather distraught when the robot was hit by another going full speed with full intent on knocking Rock 'N' Robots 3692 out of the game. The impact dislodged four of the spring clips that secured the bumper. These clips are used on agricultural equipment. Also a wheel was broken. This was a blatant hit to take the robot out. The strategy did not work because the students were determined to come back. They did.

A high speed bumper to bumper collision is almost certainly not with the intent to destroy or break a robot. If a single hit to the bumper at full speed does this much damage, I think you may need to rethink your bumper implementation.

By the way, I didn't know Janesville had a team, that's really cool. I'm originally from Clinton, but I commuted to a team in Milwaukee (1714) my senior year. If you guys existed three years ago, I bet I would have had a much shorter drive.

[RyanShoff]

4143 had a great time. We love the Wisconsin regional, but man is it hard. Our performance exceeded our expectations. We missed all our practice matches Thursday and didn't get a 30 point climb until our 4th match on Friday. Haven't missed one since.

Thanks to 706 for being our partner two years in a row. I'm all for making it three in a row.

It was pretty cool getting to pick last year's world champion 16 to be in an alliance. You guys are great. You brought a lot to our alliance. Especially when you faked out 2826 with the misinformation. I remember overhearing Wave talk about you blocking them twice in one cycle. They were something like: "they bumped us once, ran us down, and did it again".

This was our first time picking an alliance, and I couldn't be happier with the results. Our scouting team did great.

We really had a chance to beat Wave and Roboteers. The matches were closer than the scores make it appear. The climb interference call on 16 was bogus in the first match. And the ref admitted forgetting climb points in the second match. Unfortunately, we had already lost in autonomous. They shot lights out, and we fell short. There were a lot of matches played with a razor thin margin of victory.

To Bombsquad: Why did you call your robot "The Mantis"? It might be a "baby mantis" or maybe a "Mantis Jr.". It was fast and agile, but let's face it: "4143 is the real Mantis".

Looking forward to Crossroads. To me, it looks like Silicon Valley and Crossroads are going to be the toughest in week 6.

Good luck to 16 and 2826 at world's, 706 at Buckeye, and good luck to 2481 at Crossroads.

[Jibri Wright]

Originally Posted by RyanShoff

To Bombsquad: Why did you call your robot "The Mantis"? It might be a "baby mantis" or maybe a "Mantis Jr.". It was fast and agile, but let's face it: "4143 is the real Mantis". .

I think they called it that because they originally had a 30 point climber on the back, but took it off because it was too slow. They told me that at the competition. Maybe the climber looked sort of like a mantis, but im not really sure. They didn't bring it to the regional so...

[J-Blondie]

Wisconsin was definitely amazing! Midwest might actually be less competitive this year! We look forward to playing with everyone we saw this past weekend, as well as all the new teams at Midwest. Congrats to all of the winners and those who gave it their all, but may not have been an award winner. Let's face it, we are ALL winners! Students, mentors and parents alike. And let's not forget our sponsors! My favorite part of the weekend was doing the Gangnam Style dance on Saturday to represent the team, and then getting a student out there with me for the Harlem Shake. :3 Crazy mentors dancing works the best to get those students moving!

Also, the Wisconsin Regional ran so smoothly! As far as I could tell, matches were running on time and the turn around for matches was amazing. Great job Wisconsin Regional Planning Committee and all of the great volunteers! I think this year was my favorite Wisconsin Regional.