10 ten plays of the year

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by Yan Wang

I liked Finals 1.1 in Canada... I went for the hang early on. As in, right after autonomous. We got up very fast while Buzz picked up balls. 1114 hung in a way that when they lifted up, they lifted up on our robot (perfectly legal). Our Tulip should not be detachable but all that day we used a bolt to make it wider to give the driver a larger target - well, the result was that we were dehanged by 1114. Falling 5" caused a huge crack of a sound and our scissor lift was bent (took about 10 min to fix afterwards, great job pit crew). So then as Buzz was feeding balls to their awesome human player, I went and pinned 48's robot for about a minute, preventing them from hanging (I think I got a penalty... did I?). Buzz's shooting was awesome and we won 90-80 (just balls! all balls!), ending 1114's streak. But I guess I'm a little biased regarding that match

I'd like to provide a little clarification on our robot's condition during Finals 1.1. While it is true that we failed to hang during that match, it wasn't because we were prevented by another from doing so. During the early stages of the match, the part of our tread frame that angles upward became dented in a bit, which caused our tank tread and pulley wheel to lock up. This made us quite immobile. Your robot could have gone off in the corner and done pirouettes until the buzzer sounded, and we wouldn't have been able to do anything about it. This was quite disappointing to us, for if we had hung, our alliance would most likely have won the first finals match. But this caused no worries for our pit crew. The students and engineers huddled around the bot and, with the aid of a time out, returned xtremachen7 to full operational status in time for the second finals match, which our alliance won in exciting fashion. We then went out during the third match, played some tough d, and hung at the very last second, only to have lost by a couple balls. All in all, it was quite a satisfying performance considering the tough situation we were in at the end of Finals 1.

Thank you for your tough finals play which brought this weakness in our frame structure to our attention. These tough high-contact matches are just the thing our team needs to prepare the bot for the rigors of the Championship. This deficiency will be corrected first thing Thursday in Atlanta.