What was your teams worst expierence during competition?

[Pretzel]

This wasn't really the worst thing that happened to our team, but it did come at a poor time.
In the Cowtown Throwdown's Semifinals this year(first game of two) we were supposed to have the single feeding station for our robot. Our human player didn't get the message in time though and ended up at the double station. When I lined up the robot at the single station, he ran over to go feed the disks in there (colored disks though, so the other person couldn't have fed).
While he did that I had been notified of the mixup, and started to drive over to the double station. We went back and forth with me being told to go to one side or the other and the human player yelling, "Make up your minds!" until finally one of the belts had a disk slide on top of it during a turn. Moving forward brought the disk underneath the wheel and dislodged the belt.
It's the most frustrating feeling when you can't get your robot to move as a driver, but the circumstances meant our drive team couldn't help but laugh a little bit.

[Jared]

When we fell of the tower from the very top, in a practice match in st. louis.

We bent a 1/2" lead screw for our deployment mechanism at a 90 degree angle and had snapped three welds on our upper frame. After we got the robot to the pit, we removed the shooter, made a new hopper/loader out of lexan, removed the frame from the drivebase (the robot went from 60" tall to about 4" tall), swapped a shattered wheel, modified our "spare" frame that we brought with us, just in case, and rewired the shooter. Then, we put the new frame on, reattached the shooter, added the makeshift hopper, and when we went to turn the robot on, we discovered that our 24v power supply on the pdb had broken during the fall when our battery (which was also ruined) smashed into the power distribution board. So, we unhooked everything, added a new power board, and wired up most of the motors. We got to the field, the radio power fell out during the beginning of the match, we didn't move the whole time, and when we got back, we had to swap power boards again. All because of a fall on a practice match. Then, the next day, we ended up seeded 13th in Archimedes, but we weren't picked for eliminations. That was pretty disappointing.

Fortunately, we never had to use our frame straightener!

[mechanical_robot]

Originally Posted by Jared

When we fell of the tower from the very top, in a practice match in st. louis.

We bent a 1/2" lead screw for our deployment mechanism at a 90 degree angle and had snapped three welds on our upper frame. After we got the robot to the pit, we removed the shooter, made a new hopper/loader out of lexan, removed the frame from the drivebase (the robot went from 60" tall to about 4" tall), swapped a shattered wheel, modified our "spare" frame that we brought with us, just in case, and rewired the shooter. Then, we put the new frame on, reattached the shooter, added the makeshift hopper, and when we went to turn the robot on, we discovered that our 24v power supply on the pdb had broken during the fall when our battery (which was also ruined) smashed into the power distribution board. So, we unhooked everything, added a new power board, and wired up most of the motors. We got to the field, the radio power fell out during the beginning of the match, we didn't move the whole time, and when we got back, we had to swap power boards again. All because of a fall on a practice match. Then, the next day, we ended up seeded 13th in Archimedes, but we weren't picked for eliminations. That was pretty disappointing.

Fortunately, we never had to use our frame straightener!

O good how horrible. Nice slth by the way

[mechanical_robot]

Originally Posted by inkling16

Not a terrible moment, but funny and nerve-wracking.
In autonomous in our first practice match, the robot shot 3 discs into the wall, then drove backward 2 feet, then proceeded to spin in circles in place for the rest of autonomous. Nothing broke, but it scared all of us.

Aren't untested auto modes so much fun

Noooo they arent fun hahah

[IndySam]

2011 Being red carded in a quarter-finals match by a person not even part of the ref crew because he was talked into it by a persuasive student from the other alliance. BTW video showed the ref crew was correct and the certain person was completely wrong. Still waiting for the apology.


2012 Cincinnati rule, enough said.

[mechanical_robot]

Originally Posted by IndySam

2011 Being red carded in a quarter-finals match by a person not even part of the ref crew because he was talked into it by a persuasive student from the other alliance. BTW video showed the ref crew was correct and the certain person was completely wrong. Still waiting for the apology.


2012 Cincinnati rule, enough said.

Wow some people and what they will do just to win.

[MichaelBick]

2012 San Diego was pretty awful for us. Immediately after hybrid ended during our first qual match, our driver ran full speed backward into the coop bridge. Our electronics board happened to be really exposed(poor design). The bridge ended up destroying quite a few victors, and we had to completely redesign the electronics board, missing the rest of our qual matches except for one. On the bright side we had no problems with the new electronics board and were finalists at the LA regional(the best our team had ever done at that time).

[216Robochick288]

Worst FIRST experience (and from it, perhaps the best) was when my dad's truck and Trailer were stolen last year. Despite all that we lost, we got the truck back and I felt like the tiniest little village full of people from around the world that day. So, perhaps not the very worst.

Worst on field has got to be back in Lunacy (2009) at Lansing. Got picked into the finals. We had been having problems literally all competition with our drive train, tightening and loosening the chain between every and all matches. We just could NOT figure out why. During the finals (2nd match, if I remember correctly) our drive train finally failed. Stepping back for the first time all weekend, we quickly realised what happened.

We had built the drive base as one separate piece, and then added the shooter on top of it. There wasnt a single bar that ran the whole length top to bottom. Because of this, the drive train was no longer square, and the 'top' half had shifted in the corners by nearly 2 inches front and back, both sides.

In that same year, we found out to build the robot smaller than max dimensions. Oh the nightmare as we took the deadblow and our mentor, setting the robot on its edge and having him stand on it while we beat it with the hammers.... A funny sight, but what a nightmare. Never. Again.

[Zebra_Fact_Man]

Robot-related:
The whole 2013 season, where, for the first 3/4 of the season, literally every single match something failed to work on our robot.
We finally got all systems to work congruently on the second day of our second competition, good enough for 4 fail-free matches.

That was the year of the struggle-bus.


Most painful/scariest moment:
Testing our 2011 autonomous mode at our 2nd competition, the programmers failed to reduce the motor speed of our drive train from 100% (like I told them to do beforehand), and the robot came lurching toward one of our student members standing on the side, claw extended.

Had to swat the claw away to prevent it from smacking him in the face, and my hand got pretty bloodied from the impact.

[treffk]

I have 2 that come to mind when I think of bad experiences.

First of which was our rookie year and we were at the Denver Regional. We were doing very well for a rookie team and achieved highest rookie seed and were ranked 3rd when it came to alliance selections. Friday night was the team social at Fat City and the driver, safety captain and 2 others were playing mini golf. Our safety captain was being less than safe and swung the club like it was an actual golf club. In the process he hit our only driver right under the eye causing him to need stitches and pain medication. I was a freshman at the time and distinctly remember seeing him and our coach walk towards the exit, blood seeping from the paper towel under his eye. Needless to day the next day was interesting and we did not do as well as we possibly could have.

Second was when we traveled to Atlanta for Championships in 2008. We the finale there was a misunderstanding between our coach and a parent. Coach thought the student was going with his parents to dinner, parents thought the student was staying with us. The student ended up wandering from the Finale until he found our hotel. He had no one's phone number and didn't even know the name of our hotel. We learned about his little adventure the next day.

I'm assured we have probably had some bad mechanical experiences as well but I do not know any of them as I have always focused more on the business side of things.

[yarden.saa]

So, Israel Regional 2011:
We were connecting our arm in the first day. The arm weight was about 30 pounds. The arm had an axle which was already in place and a spring piston that carried the arm weight. The spring piston was connected temporally with plier patent and after couple of minutes the arm fell on my head....
It was VERY PAINFUL

[Jscout11]

2011 was an interesting year for us, possibly our best season and probably the unluckiest. At each competition we went to we ran into an issue in the semifinals (we called our team the best semifinalist team in the world that year).

In Palmetto, we accidentally bumped another robot near its minibot pole, drawing a red card and disqualifying our alliance.

In Virginia, our minibot hit the top of the pole but didnt activate the sensor, which may have won us the match (there was some debate as to whether our minibot got to the top first or not)

Newton Semifinals- After helping to contribute to one of the highest combined scores of Logomotion and beating out the alliance of 148, 234, and 2481 in the quarters, our claw broke in the semifinals. We still have the claw in our trophy case.

[philso]

2011, Logomotion

It was the first year of participating in FRC for my sons and myself. Previously, they had done very well, over several years, in the local FLL tournaments. The team we were invited to join had less than 12 students on the roster and was dominated by two students with very strong personalities and indulgent (team) parents. The build took place at one of their homes. The two dominant students pretty much pushed all the other students aside. They did things like taking apart a half-built minibot after the builder went home at the end of the evening because they "had a different idea" and needed the parts. After the end of the 6 week build period, my sons and I were asked to build another minibot since the original minibot builder gave up fighting them for parts. We did most of the work outside of the build site to avoid these problems. When we got to the Lone Star regional, we demonstrated that our minibot could do the climb in about 2.5 seconds (www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXv3O_5oH20). The original minibot took something like 5-8 seconds so we were asked to install ours on the robot. We then found that everything we were told about the space we had to install the minibot launching mechanism was completely wrong. We spent all of Thursday and most of Friday totally redesigning our launching mechanism to make it fit on the robot. The drivers were able to lauch it a few times in the practice area and everyone was happy (www.youtube.com/watch?v=10MxQCTuAQ0). On the field, the drivers did this www.youtube.com/watch?v=Piq4VSKoy54. TWICE! I am sure the drivers on the opposing alliance had a good laugh. My sons broke down and cried after they left the claw down the second time on Saturday morning. In the end, the team was unable to score any points with the minibot even though only 118 and a few other teams had a minibot that could go faster. At the end of the school year, the sponsoring teacher retired and the team collapsed.

In the spring, we were invited to join a different team. This team did not have a minibot so we installed it on their robot for the inaugural Texas Robot Roundup. There were a few misfires of the new launching mechanism. Finally, it was able to make it to the top first one time. My sons felt vindicated.

[Lil' Lavery]

My whole time in FRC has been a parade of "worst experiences during competition." Poorly timed mechanical failures, strategic mistakes, bad scouting, untested code, communications errors, hard to diagnose problems, etc. It's hard to pick just one.

This one probably is the easiest to translate into this thread. To provide a little setting, this was the very last qualification match of the 2008 Philadelphia regional. We were currently on the bubble to be an alliance captain, so we were getting prepared for the eliminations. Our software lead had loaded some new autonomous code onto the robot to correct one issue, but apparently decided to make another change as well. You can see the results for yourself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EESb452FMHw
To add insult to injury, in a penalty plagued 2008 game, we had yet to take a single penalty. This failed automode was our first.
It turns out we ended up being the #8 alliance captain, which not only meant we had to face the vaunted combination of 103 and 272 in the quarter-finals, but we'd be playing in the very first elimination match of the afternoon. One very very hectic lunch break later (in which Chuck ate all my pizza), our "spare" claw was mounted and we were essentially ready to compete. We just ran laps and played defense in the first match, since we weren't confident in our claw repairs yet. In the second, we managed to actually hurdle once again. Not that it really mattered, as we were plastered by the top seeded alliance. Who knows if we would have been on a higher alliance (and avoided the powerhouse #1 alliance) if our claw wasn't split in half.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Answer42

Having our teams mentor scream at us for an hour after another teams mentor helped us improve our shooter at a regional.

That mentor sounds like a real winner.