Robotics Competition Stories!!

[Jestin McCarthy]

The year 2000......... the place Hartford, CT. The final match for the NE regional championship was just amazing. CHAOS had to steal that last black ball out of the other alliances trough. They did with a few seconds left in the match, and won the NE Regional. Simply perfect! Nationals.......... thats another story for another day. 2000 WHAT A GREAT SEASON!!!!!!!!

[Matt Reiland]

Chief Delphi did the same at Great Lakes in 2000, that was the most amazing robot I had ever seen.

[Mike Schroeder]

how this: one year our robot was known for its ability to burst into flames when ever it wants to
thats right how would you like to be known as the team that when entered the field, the Officals would be issued a fire extinguisher (sp?)

[Rob Colatutto]

Originally posted by 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

i remember that, and at utc new england one of the judges got a coin from woodie and started to explain how it would work, if you go through all the tie breakers because they had a really hard match to decide there

[Ryan Foley]

i was a freshmen driver for my team. My drive team was scheduled to drive for my teams last qualifying match. The match before that we were in our front left wheel had broken off (this had happened the day before,which was friday). The wheel mount physically broke in half. ANyways, they reattaced the freshly welded wheel mount. Apparently theweld was still hot, so they had me drive using our robots back end as our front, so all the controls were reversed. Then our battery kept cutting out on us in the worst possible location (so that we were blocking the path to get up the bridge). Not fun

[Clark Gilbert]

The year 2000, the regional: Motorola Midwest, the teams: 45, 47, 111 all on an alliance in the finals. After going through the bracket we make it to the end and come out as the winners. I tell ya what, that event alone left a big impact in my future FIRST "career"...

[Joel J]

The year: 2002... the end

[Kristina]

Originally posted by Mr.Volcano
how this: one year our robot was known for its ability to burst into flames when ever it wants to
thats right how would you like to be known as the team that when entered the field, the Officals would be issued a fire extinguisher (sp?)

In Seattle our robot started smoking...like as in smoke coming from the robot because tape was burning. That definately was not good and do you know how many jokes we got about it, especially since our team name was Hart Burn?

[Adam Y.]

Hehe this was our first match last year. It was funny as hell. It started off with our robot falling over backwards. Whoops.. two years in a row that happened. As it turns out the other team thinking they actually won the thing started helping our score out so that they'd get a pretty decent score. As it turns out we fell backwards into the scoring zone so we had actually one by I think a few points. Thats got to be the luckiest thing to happen ever to anyone.

[RBrandy]

2001 MMR... We wernt doing well at all in the competition and we had turned off our power and the air in the acumalator(sp?) went into the cylinders for the arm and it hit 2 liquid crystal clocks off. We were lucky they didnt DQ us for that one. Looking back to it was kinda funny.

[sidewinder]

This year we won nationals, but it was a fight. Our alliance was perfect, it was funny i studied 71 for its previous regionals and knew its flaws, little did i know they would be partners for national championships.

Anyway there are two scary moments in divisionals and chanpionships. The first came in the first match of divisionals, against the 8th seed should of been a pushover, but when beatty fell, it fell wrong the most horrible thing i could imagine. We lost our first match against the 8th seed.

The second disaster was in the last bracket of national champs, beatty went out with 173 and something happened on its fall, but when it came back to the little pit behind the field i noticed that its wheel had sheered off. We and 173 had to do it alone (god bless the ballers)

[Joe Menassa]

My story comes from nationals in the archemedies division. Our strategy guy, Rick, had told everyone that we were going to get a 190pt match next. No one really believed him but he claimed to have it planned out so perfectly that it would not fail. We went into the match knowing we had to give ourselves a score in the high 60's and give our opposing alliance a score in the lower 60's. Towards the end of the match we noticed that our opposing alliance had not scored enough and that we had 76 points. So we moved our robot into the opposite home zone to try to give ourselves a decent multiplier. The match ended and we were not too happy because the opposing alliance did not have many points. When the announcer came on with the score you could tell that something was going on. No one had actually noticed..except for the refs (thank God) that one of the opposing robots had let out a tether under a goal at one point during the match. Thus they were disqualifed. My team was not really expecting to get the 190pt match that Rick had actually planned. But we did..the highest score ever..198pts. And to think, we gave away points during the match..if we had only known.

I went crazy!

[Jessi]

during a match at kennedy space center in 2001. 234 was on the ramp when another robot came behind us and hit our robot. our battery dislodged and fell off of our robot into theirs. so we dont have power and are right in the way because the ramp was really the only way to go unless you were small enough to fit under those bars. but the same robot then came at full speed, or something close to it, and rammed us off of the ramp right on to our grabbers on the left side of the ramp. we all thought that we were broken after that.

jessi

[Andy Baker]

OK, I've got a lot of these... but here is one:

It's 1998, at the Nationals. I think that the elimination rounds are just beginning. We were on stage at Einstein, getting ready for a match against team 65, the Huskie Brigade.

Right before our match started, a TechnoKat 8th grader ran up to our drive team and said:

"Watch their human player. He will try to knock hit your ball out of the middle scoring zone right when you put it in there... fake putting it in there, so he throws his ball away."

This 8th grader was very excited that he found this news out... the drive team acted like it was no big deal and said "yeah, thanks."

So... we get into the match, and we get a ball ready to score into the middle scoring zone. Our arm operator started to roll out the ball to let it go... but he faked letting it go and rolled it back into the gripper. Right before he rolled it back, the Huskie HP threw his ball hard, right at where we were scoring our ball.

After the Huskie ball flew over the top of the middle scoring zone, our operator calmly scored the ball.

The match was close, and we won. We have been using this example on the importance of scouting ever since '98. Of course, we made a big deal about how important that information was and gave alot of credit to the 8th grader who found it out.

Andy B.

[mpking]

It's 2000, in New Jersey.

We're down be a few points. That was the year if you suspend yourself from a center bar, you scored 10 points.

The opposing team had locked onto the bar, and they were blocking the whole bar.

It was put up or shut up time. We back'd up, and went forward at full ramming speed!

Wonder of wonders, we actually lifted them enough to knock them off the Bar, and clamp ourself onto the bar with just one or two seconds left.

We got best play of the day for that one.

Too bad I don't have a picture of it. :-(

It's hard to pick one. We've always had great years, and great moments. 1999, doing a perfect score and having the #1 seed.
1998, our Main gear snapping at Rumble at the Rock, and sending us crashing down!

1997,was a great year. We had the highest score at any competition!
We lost the the New jersey regional by a matter of 1/16th of an inch. They ended up pulling Woodie onto the field to make the final call, cause nobody wanted to do it.

It's the wfinals at Rumber at the Rock 1997. That year, Team 121 made it there stragegy to flip every team over, usually breaking the robot in the process. (Nope, we're not bitter)

the first round, team 121 skipped grabbing tubes, and went for us. We were on the goal at that point, fully extended, but we hadn't locked on yet, they got under us and flipped us with there spatula. SMASH our main arm was in two pieces from the impact. two time outs later (Thanks again Gael Force for loaning us yours), One minute Expoxy, and some band-aids, we had managed to glue it back together. . The second round,

We make a quick grab for 4 tubes, and again go for the goal. Again, team 121 got under us, and flipped us again. This time, it's in 4 peices. There isn't enough time, and glue to put it back together.

It's very hard, but try to imagine being faced with a descision. We had to rip our main arm off our robot. Ouch. we try'd to compete, to try and keep them from scoring, but it's hard when your only a moving box.