Resourceful Thinking

[Billfred]

I've gotta say, the Firebirds (aka 433) probably used their arm for about a billion different things at Palmetto. High-centering? A smidge. But it was mind-blowingly effective.

Our robot, when we built it, was supposed to handle the 2X ball on the mobile goals and do some light herding. Boy, did that not work right. Sure, we uncapped--but then we'd lose our grip on the sucker, and we'd be stuck. So we ditched the arm altogether and ran with the base. It actually was pretty good at defense, helping us defeat 1319 (at that point the #1 seed, and still finished #8), and leading to our brief proclamation that 1293 was "armless, not harmless." (That was squashed pretty well with a defeat in our final qualifier.)

We came, we saw, we learned. I shudder to think what we'll have in 2005. (A sponsor, perhaps.)

By the way, since the FIRST website doesn't have anything before Stack Attack, can someone point me to some archived rules? I'd love to find out what Maize Craze was back in 1992.