The luck stops here . . .

[archiver]

Posted by Daniel, Student on team #192, Gunn Robotics Team, from Henry M Gunn Senior High School and NASA Ames.

Posted on 4/26/99 6:25 PM MST



I had been wondering about why T-45 pulled their robot out of the second and third rounds of the final match, so I went up and asked them. That's when I learned about the tragedy. I'm not posting this to belittle the achievements of the national champions, for they obviously earned a very high placing. I just thought some of you might be as curious as I was as to why they stopped using their ‘bot.

It was the first round of the final match at Epcot and Delphi Kokomo was in the runnings for #1 with their alliance partners. In a devastating battle over the puck, the wires to their sensor port were torn from the connector. All that remained unsevered was one red wire. The mess would never be fixed in time. It was devastating.

The moral? We all get a little unlucky sometimes...


-Daniel

[archiver]

Posted by Jon, Engineer on team #190, Gompei, from Mass Academy of Math and Science and Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Posted on 4/27/99 12:45 AM MST


In Reply to: The luck stops here . . . posted by Daniel on 4/26/99 6:25 PM MST:



: I had been wondering about why T-45 pulled their robot out of the second and third rounds of the final match, so I went up and asked them. That's when I learned about the tragedy. I'm not posting this to belittle the achievements of the national champions, for they obviously earned a very high placing. I just thought some of you might be as curious as I was as to why they stopped using their ‘bot.

: It was the first round of the final match at Epcot and Delphi Kokomo was in the runnings for #1 with their alliance partners. In a devastating battle over the puck, the wires to their sensor port were torn from the connector. All that remained unsevered was one red wire. The mess would never be fixed in time. It was devastating.

: The moral? We all get a little unlucky sometimes...

:
: -Daniel

-----
little streaks of bad luck hit everyone at sometime.
our robot had been behaving extremely well and much more reliably than at the regionals but that all came to a halt when during our our quarter-final match against Aces High & Friends, we suffered a small yet devastating blow with a portion of our lower pole clamp.
One of two hardened steel plates that had been brazed together simply broke under the various stresses of the moment. It did not break along the brazing either, it was a manufacturing defect that just showed it's ugly face at the worst possible time.

congrats to Aces High & Friends on a great win!

Jonathan

[archiver]

Posted by Andy Baker, Engineer on team #45, TechnoKats, from Kokomo High School and Delphi Automotive Systems.

Posted on 4/27/99 5:39 PM MST


In Reply to: The luck stops here . . . posted by Daniel on 4/26/99 6:25 PM MST:



I wouldn't attribute it to bad luck, although I want to. Since our robot
was a battler, we took the brunt of many tangles throughout the finals.

During the first round of the elimination tournament, team 68 scooted
us off the puck and we needed a repair after they won that match. Or
second alliance pick, Team 84 came in to pair with 111 and those two
teams masterfully played two matches where we saw all four teams ending
up on the puck... wow!

Then we went to the quarters, where we go tossed over backwards and
resurrected ourselves with our arm to reclaim the puck. We had to replace
one of our masterlinks in our shoulder joint chain after that match.

During the semifinals against 71 and 27, team OSMTech managed to grab
us in a very vulnerable place, our shoulder wiring cable, and almost
yanked us off the puck. We thought that we fixed some broke connections
after that match, but we didn't realize how much damage was made.

During the first finals match against 176 and 1, the Juggernauts did us
in... they must've grabbed our arm in a way that broke the remaining
electrical connections to our arm.

We just were not quite as durable as we needed to be. The winning alliance
deserves the credit for winning and being extremely robust. They were
running on all cylinders, while we weren't. When you live by the sword,
you die by the sword... and we were done. It wasn't bad luck.

Andy B.