2015 Midwest Regional

[bigbeezy]

Originally Posted by avanboekel

We did not have this issue. Was it all 3 teams on red?

Actually we saw this as well. After we pulled the cans in auto the bot stopped as it normally did. Then started driving again for no reason and caused us to bump into 171. No damage caused and we didn't think much of it at the time.

[XaulZan11]

Originally Posted by RyanShoff

Our litter thrower made up the difference.

In addition to the litter, two things that stood out to me were 2830's contribution and 2062's driving. Having them able to create a capped stack of 6 with 4143 (by building the bottom stack of 4), really maximized the contribution of all three robots. Unlike at some events this year, the third robot played a critical role in the alliance. It also clear 2062 has a ton of driver practice. Watching them strafe a semicircle around a tipped over RC bin to pick it up from the bottom was extremely impressive and saved them a lot of time.

This was probably the deepest, most competitive Midwest since 08/09.

[RyanShoff]

Originally Posted by bigbeezy

Actually we saw this as well. After we pulled the cans in auto the bot stopped as it normally did. Then started driving again for no reason and caused us to bump into 171. No damage caused and we didn't think much of it at the time.

Good to know. I guess we'll add a latch in the code so auto will only run once.

[bigbeezy]

Thank you Midwest for once again being an exciting and thrilling regional. We are incredibly honored to receive the Regional Chairman's Award. Thank you 1756 and 171 for being awesome alliance partners. We definitely had to dig ourselves out of some big holes but when we needed to we came through. 2062, 4143, and 2830 y'all were an amazing alliance and your human player... man he's good.

Thank you Bomb Squad for covering for us when we fell over. Wish we could have run together.

I hope PWNAGE is able to figure out and fix the issue they were experiencing. I was sad to see them forced to back out of playoffs like that.

See y'all at Champs!

[Alan2338]

Definitely one of the best Midwest Regionals to date. I'd felt like Midwest had become a rather dull competition the last few years with not enough competition. 2015 blew that out of the water.
Thank you to 1756 Argos and 171 Cheese Curd Herd for taking us to the finals, and we'll see the both of you in St. Louis.
Congrats to 4143, 2062, and 2830 on an amazing win. Some of the most synergy I've seen from an alliance.
I wasn't really a part of 2338 this year, so congrats to them on the Chairman's win, it's been a long time coming.
I'd like to congratulate the 2338 Seniors on making it to Champs and the Chairman's win. I know my senior year didn't turn out so well and everyone was a bit choked-up in the pits this year.

A final congratulation to my mother, Diane Cabiness, for winning the Volunteer of the Year Award as a first year FSM.

Hope to see everyone at champs. Thanks for a great competition.

[the programmer]

Thanks to everyone for making this such an amazing event, this is only my second time at the event but the difference in the level of play from last year was incredible. Thank you to 4143 and 2062 for being such an amazing alliance and to 2338, 1756 and 171 for putting up a great fight in the finals, I'm still amazed that we were able to win the third match! Finally, congratulations to 2062 on their first multiple win season, this is an impressive milestone and being able to team up with my old team to help them accomplish this was an amazing experience.

[Eagleeyedan]

Originally Posted by RyanShoff

Did I mention our noodle thrower was really good in the finals?

Indeed, he made almost every throw all the way across and did a great job muddling up the ramps for our opponents! We were watching in awe from the stands!

[JeremyLansing]

First off, a huge shout-out to our partners 2338 and 1756 for picking us. We had a blast playing with you guys, righting recycle cans is something we only spent a small amount of our practice time on, thank you for putting your faith in us.

4143, 2062, and 2830, you guys were awesome. I was sure once 2338 grabbed all the center cans in Finals Match 3 we had it in the bag, and you guys still came storming back.

Additional congratulations to Team 2338 for winning Chairman's and to Team 2630 for winning Engineering Inspiration.

This will be Team 171's first trip to Championships since 2010 and we are super excited to have that opportunity, and I couldn't think of a more exciting way to do it than at Midwest, there were lots of super exciting matches all weekend.

[tStano]

Originally Posted by RyanShoff

During F-1, automode executed twice for at least our alliance. It cost us the robot set and nearly damaged our forks when we collided with the landfill. We won the match so we didn't make a big deal about it. I haven't seen video, so I don't know if it happened to the other side too.

This happened to us in either our last or second last qualification match. We picked up our totes, didn't drive back quite all the way, and then kinda twitched forward and backwards lifting our totes some more. Nothing bad happened, and we had other things to fix after the match, so we didn't talk to an FTA, but I'm pretty sure auto ran twice. This was an issue last year as well. I was really hoping it was fixed.

[Sunshine]

John,
Thanks for the kind words about our drivers. You are correct, lots and lots of driving practice. This year was the easiest game to coach IMHO. The predictability of the game made anticipating possible scenarios simple.

Since everyone is giving their favorite moments, here's mine. We had just finished doing a 6 stack with RC and noodle during the last match. I had been preaching zero risk play to all alliance partners during elims. While working on the second stack, our first two totes came out of the chute crooked. I told drivers 5, do 5, meaning a 5 stack with noodle and RC. While we were getting the 4th tote I looked up at the score board and we were behind by something like 48 points (not sure, didn't have the time to do the math in the 1/2 second I needed to make a decision). I hollered out: "6, do 6, we have to go for the win!" The drivers reacted in time, somehow straightened the stack and delivered. That one tote gave us the win versus a tie. If it had been a tie, the other alliance would have won the tie breaker.

Now, I do not tell this story to boast or gloat. Quite the contrary. I know that had we gone for the 5 stack I would be beating myself up for a very, I mean very very long time. Not sure if I would actually ever forgive myself for letting the kids down.

I'm sure others on both sides have thought about how we/they/them/us either contributed to get those 6 points or missed out.......... Like our great 4 point autonomous and a great noodle thrower

[The_Marmot]

The Midwest finals were as intense as last year's. This year also had as much teamwork as last year (remember, 171?).
Robotigers, thanks for making a reliable 4 stack. You guys were great and followed the plan exactly. The extra totes in the last match helped greatly.
CORE, to be honest, you surprised me with your robot. I knew you were good, but WOW. Special thanks to Mr. Sunshine (2062) who kept up the motivation and planning. And thanks to the rest of our drive team (Mr. G, Jordan, and Jarrett). Everyone contributed.

2338 and 1756, you guys were worthy opponents. Going into eliminations, we knew alliance #1 would be hard to beat with two great chute/landfill bots (and barrel snatchers). My chest collapsed when I saw the barrels being pulled in the last match.

Note: In finals match 2, our anti-slip device for the totes worked too well...

Finally, there was a sense of irony at Midwest:
1) 1756 and us switched places between CIR and Midwest. (winner vs. finalist and Excellence in Engineering)
2) 1756 and 2338 helped us reach rank 3 in our last qualification matches...
3) 171, we were with you last year, and against you this year. Congrats on going to the Championship.
Thanks for an exciting competition!

[AutodeskGeek]

For everyone who wants to review videos, a parent on our team took videos of our matches, including playoffs. The videos are slightly biased toward focusing on our alliance sometimes, as it was not an official tournament video.

Hopefully we can get the videos up sometime this week, and I'll try to post the links. That said, is there a link to an archived stream of the full tournament somewhere?

[Sunshine]

The last match........
http://youtu.be/MAB9Li4zmmE

[Alan2338]

My heart sunk all over again...
Good win for the red alliance.
If even one of those 4 cans we stole would have been standing up, it might be a different story.

[Sunshine]

Highest score of the regional.
http://youtu.be/LSe-7hu8F3w