Failure of Robot Interface

[Matt McNelley]

Anyone who saw our first round of the finals at the Midwest Regional knows that we didn't function at all after sustaining an impact from another robot. It was thought at first that it was a battery problem, and that is what you heard from the announcer if you watched the webcast, or were there. Well, the problem was not a battery connection, or any other kind of external connection for that matter. Immediately following the round, we gave all the connections a thorough inspection, and could find nothing wrong with the robot. We were still getting power, but we had no radio communication. Well, one of the engineers gave the console a couple of taps and it came back to life. Something inside of the actual component of the radio equipment must have broken. Whatever it was, it definitely didn't help us out any.

Has anyone else had problems of this sort?