Robotics Competition Stories!!

[Melissa H.]

I'm kind of wondering if there are any teams who would like to share any robotics competition stories/experiences. Anyone have any stories to share?

[sanddrag]

We were at the LA regional in like 7th or 9th place which is pretty good and we had just won our last match with a really high score. We were in our next match and everything was going really well. We had moved a goal into scoring zone and no none touched it. We brought another goal back to fill with balls and started to take it back to the scoring zone when the opposing aliance tried to block us. I Just hit it into full throttle forward and we had like a 20 second pushing match right at the scoring zone line. I pushed it hard right until the end when the buzzer sounded. The goal was clearly 1/8" - 1/4" over the line. Everyone in the audience was screaming for the judges to declare it a score. One judge looked at it, and then called over another judge. Before you knew it all the judges in the arena were huddled over this goal and line. They spent seriously 3 minutes debating over whether it was a score or not. What it came down to is they got something like a piece of cardstock and held it verticle against the edge of the goal. Where it came down on the carpet would determine whether we won or lost. They said we were about half a millimeter short or wining. Somebody must have accidentally kicked the goal into the zero zone while all this was happening. Man was it close. Right when the match was over, I knew we had the win, but the judges have the last word.

[Andy Baker]

I remember that match... I was one of the refs. The goal was about 1/16" inch short of being in the scoring zone. We (refs) used an orange right angle square to determine if the goal was in the zone or not. We made sure that no one touched the goal, and it didn't move... it just wasn't quite far enough to be in the scoring zone.

We (refs) made sure that goal position (in or out) was determined before we counted anything else on the field, since we didn't want to alter the position of the goal.

Not only was it really close, we even pulled the coach from the losing alliance onto the field to see that they actually did not score the goal... it really wasn't debatable.

All in all... an exciting and memorable match. That goal was full o' balls, and it would've been another 25+ points for the alliance who came about a millimeter away from winning.

Andy B.

[sanddrag]

Wow somebody remembers. Sweeet. All the people in the stands swore it was over the line. I didn't go on that side of the field to see it but Ohhhhhh was it close. If I had like another .0001 units of traction. Man, we could have been up like 5 more places in the end if we could have got that one.

<edit>What is traction measured in anyway?</edit>


PS. That FIRST guy at the LA regional with the spikey colored hair is awesome. You know, he was the one getting all the teams pumped up right before their match. Does anyone know him? I talked to him and he is an engineer who was working on a giant telescope revolving door in South America. Now he's working on the capability to duplicate a smell hundreds of thousands of miles away. Cool guy huh?

[Bill Gold]

You'd be talking about Mark Leon, from NASA

[Rob Colatutto]

great stories.... i just watched this match again because its so great to watch. the second match of finals at battle cry 3, when 121 knocked over rage 173 and pushed them to thier home zone....gotta love it (sorry rage, its just a really awesome match , no hard feelings)

[Tom Schindler]

2001 - UTC New England Regional - Finals. It was the first match - (126,177,69,501,175) - We were to go under the bar, grab a big ball, and wait for Gael Force to balance the goals with 69's help. We all did our proper jobs until about 1:10 was left in the match, we knew that we wented to be in the endzone and clocked out by 1:01. We stopped our efforts for putting hte big ball on top of the balanced goal, and booked for the endzone. As we were doing this, my coach said to me, "Drop the ball" - i replied, "no, we might need it later"

As we entered the endzone the bot jerked as we killed the power causing it to lean forward on its front wheels. There was nothing i could do, the power was off. The bot stayed tilted on its front two wheels for what seemed like an eternity, only to fall out of bound. My first thought was that we were screwed, until i realized the robot was not touching the ground, the robot had balanced on the ball which was still firmly grasped in our claw.

The referees could not decide what to do, they did not know whether the bot was counted as "in the endzone" or disqualified for touching outside teh field. they then consulted Dean and Woodie... it puzzled them too. It took them at least 5 minutes to come to a decision... i attached a picture of the robot in fall, and a picture of dean and woodie being completely baffled about what to do.

Tom



The Bobcat Falling...


How We Landed...


Dean and Woodie Confused...

[sanddrag]

In another match at the June 29 2002 SCRRF Summer Classic we were taking shots into a goal in te middle of the score zone all the way across the field. I'm really not good at basketball but the first shot I took I made. Then my friend took a shot and made that. Those were the only balls we had and we won the match by one point.

At LA, Team 60 I believe was having a problem with their tether/extender thing in one particular match. With like 2 seconds left they kicked it into 2nd gear and high-tailed it back home. The buzzer sounded when they were half-way across the field and they coasted barely the rest of the way into home zone hanging a cool 3 inches over the score line. That's the benifit of an efficient drive train my friends.

[Kristina]

Maybe you're thinking of team 691 instead of team 60 (or it coulda happened at both, I wasn't there for the whole LA competition). Our extendor got stuck and we were yelling at our driver to take the robot home and they kept trying and trying to get the tether out. Finally he just turned it all around and barely got the robot back to the homezone. Those robotic competitions sure are nervewracking! I almost had a heart attack (and incase any of you know our school name, I wasn't trying to make a silly pun since we're Hart High)

[purplehaze357]

haha...i have a story to top all stories...LoL

So last year was a very successful year for royal assualt...we had a corporate sponsor for the first time in our three year exsistence in PECO energy and we went to the LSR on a NASA grant...We won our first awards and we and we qualified for Fla. all in one year...ok so thats the pre-cursor to the story here...

We were watching the awards ceremonies last year...and it was out first national competition so needless to say we were all overwhelmed and excited by the atmostphere of the place...the awards ceremonies were coming to an end when they got to the "delphi driving tomorrow's technology award" they went thru the description of the award and the team that won it and all...and of course about halfway through the speech one of the lilttle hints they put in there directly reflected our team so in excitement i screamed...pre-maturily and i got looks from the adults....and as if that wasnt enough when it was announced that we had won the award we ran...i was ahead of the pack....luckily i had an aisle seat....and i ran down the aisle and as i was running a lady from a FORD sponored team stood out in the aisle and BAM i smacked right into her....i picked her up and appologized profusily(*sp)...and ran onto the stage to get the award...it was an awkward moment to say the least...us being in our first national competition and winning an award...

if anyone from that ford team is on this board and knows the person i ran into i would just like to express my deepest appologies...

does anyone remember this event?....or did it go undetected?

[sidewinder]

This is more funny than wierd........
Last year we built a mini bot (piger= penguin tiger) and it becmse famous wherever we went, and not to be over zealous but i never saw one that was better.
Any way it was at the great Lakes regional. being our first regional and the fact that we were still building the bot, our release mechanism for the mini bot had not been perfected (it wuld be corrected for the next regional). Wel to make a long story short it kept falling out. In one match against wildstang, it fell out after 30 seconds and was on its own while Frostbite II (our robot) was out delivering a goal. Our skilled driver for piger just kept it moving. Well Wildstang thought it would be a good idea to go sfter piger, along with its ally, so for about a minute 2 130 pound robots chased a 10 pound tethered robot around the field while Frostbite II sat with its goalin position.
Being in the stand myself i was terrified to see piger get cornered, but with 20 seconds to go our driver floored it and piger ran right next to wildstang all the way across the field and scored. (we got revenge on wildstang, later)
In Grand rapids too we deployed piger with only 6 second to go, and it flew across the field but the buzzzer rang and power went dead, because our mini bot is very heavy and has a specially designed wire coil mechnism, it went another three feet on inertia, and the place was quiet for a minute at the camera zoomed in, we had crossed the line with only a small milled nylon stabilising wheel that had just been added, winning teh match by 4 points. God bless momentum

[Joe Matt]

My fav match was our team (384) vs. MOE (365). Once the buzzer rang, we jolted out. MOE let down their wings. We let down ours. Then.... BAM!!!! MOE and Spakry 3.0 hitt the 3 goals and latched on. The goals barely moved. MOE's partner tried to push it, then it got stuck on it's wing! Our partner tried to push us, but then they ran back with only a few secs left. MOE let down their tether. We let down ours. They made did, so did us. 20 vs 10, right? Nope. Durring the match, we used our front-goal pusher to push the goal accadentaly over onto MOE, thus disqualifing them. So 60 vs 0. That was a match. A photo of the match is in the gallery under VCU.

[Ricky Q.]

My story is from the 2002 Motorola Midwest Regional, our #3 alliance (269, 93, and 201) made it into to Semi-finals against the #2 alliance (107, 71, and 519). It was the first match with 269 and 201 going against 71 and 519. I went into the match thinking, we have no chance. 71 set up to go for 2 goals, but 201 turned them a bit at the beginning and they were only able to grab 1 goal, but 519 got 2 and took them into the score zone and held them against the rail, 71 pushed the other one up next to those 2. Us and 201 each hooked onto 1 of the goals 519 was holding and just tried anything to get them to move, nothing was doing until there was about :19 left in the match when something just gave, we overcame 519 and pulled the 2 goals and and 519s bot into our homezone with about 3 seconds left in the match. Final Score: 30-14 Everyone just started screaming and jumping, it was the awesomest feeling.......we lost the next 2 semis (we won't talk about that though, darn stupidity) but we went home with 3rd place....was an awesome match

Originally posted by purplehaze357

does anyone remember this event?....or did it go undetected?

I saw it! We were in the left most bleachers in the front row, and we all saw it, was rather interesting.

[Greg Perkins]

At riverage 6, we were up against some teams, and we had a goal with about 9 balls in it. we were defending it, and all of a sudden our driver, tyler, throws the bot into reverse and sticks the goal over the bar. and we let go. the match ended, and the judges and refs could not decide wether we won or not, because we "damaged the bar", all in all we won that match, and was told by Mr. kelso to NOT do it again (dont worry, wee wont)


Badjokeguy

[Matt Reiland]

How about the match at 2002 Nationals where it came down to a coin toss and the coin ended up leaning against I think a tether so one of the teams wanted another toss but the refs gave it to the other team (#'s can't remember) it would suck to lose by a coint toss after something like 5 other methods still resulted in a tie (# robots, goals, balls, even balls on the field!)

Wow