The Quest for Einstein

[Rangel(kf7fdb)]

Originally Posted by Darkseer54

As a team that focused on solely one thing this year, I can say with confidence that this is completely dependent on the game. This year was possibly the single worst year for a specialized robot (at least that I have seen). Most previous years, however, there has been a way to gain success from finding a niche and fulfilling it well.

I'm not sure if this really was the worst year for specialized robots. Conveyor belt robots like 1987 works awesome with pure cappers and specialized can grabbers could make or break on Einstein. That being said, the specializations this year were much harder than in any previous years but if pulled off right could have a huge impact in competition. We decided with about 2-3 weeks before champs to switch to being a container specialist and actually had some really great results. I think if we had decided sooner to be a can specialist or if we didn't break in our second quarterfinal, our division results would have been different but even with what we had, we did incredibly well as a support robot. Just depends on what you decide to specialize in and the execution. Some specializations also work better in the regional level vs championship level and vice versa.