pic: Wave Robotics 2826's Land Shark

[Chris is me]

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[trilogy2826]

Thanks for the praise Chris. We did work hard for a second year team, but if we learned only one thing at IRI, it is that there are a lot of amazing teams with a lot of great ideas and skill. IRI really opened our eyes (much more even than 2009 Lunacy championships) to what it takes to compete with the masters of the game. We came back as a team twice as excited about our summer program and every student that attended IRI can't wait to build experimental drivetrains, tweak our Breakaway bot for learning purposes and finish all of those lingering support projects we kept putting off during last summer.

To anyone that has never attended IRI in the past, please put it on your calendar for next year and apply. I think you will learn just as much if not more in two short days than you ever did the rest of the competition season. It was an honor to play with the all-stars of FIRST, and special thanks to 830, 217 and 1538 for a great eliminations experience.

[Basel A]

Sharkbot! That was our (2337) almost affectionate nickname for this epic machine. Scouting got boring at times, but this was one 'bot I had a lot of fun watching. Great job this year, 2826, and we hope to see you in St. Louis!

[trilogy2826]

Thanks Basel. Without sounding like a suck-up reciprocal congratulatorian (if that is even a thing), I thought your bot was hands-down the best engineered problem solver of the IRI competition. I spent at least a full hour on two separate occasions talking to your team on the process and mechanics of the hanging and deflecting system. There were so many subtle clever things that you did that made me really appreciate the human mind. The simple and elegant application of using zipties as a support for the upper mechanism that were sheared off when you deploy was really very smart. I know I would have designed a 3 pound, very complicated system just to do the same job.