Robotics Competition Stories!!

[Renzorocks]

year 2002.
Qualification match at UTC regional.

we get one goal and we position ourselves in the scoring position. 20 seconds left in the match. 716 is trying to steal the goal from us... our claw comes out and 716 keeps trying to steal our goal. 10 seconds left, 716 tries to rush into the end zone...we try to block them; the match ends. A small wire of our robot was touching the white line and the ref says that counts and they give them the 10 points. we tie 30-30, but we still win the match (we had more balls). pretty crazy.

[Stephanie]

the year: 2001
the competition: second annual WRRF cal games
within the alliance, the plan is that our robot will cross the bridge first, go to the end zone, and get a goal ready to balance. another team, able to reset the bridge, will follow us and sit in the end zone. somehow, Vulcan got to the end of the bridge, and then backed up, forward, back, forward, back *crash* *crash* as the bridge hits the floor of the gym at Evergreen community college, and the robot that's supposed to follow us, which has somehow driven under the alliance side of the bridge :-D what was the driver thinking? i have no idea. maybe he panicked when he could no longer see the robot from the alliance station? or maybe our gyro chip decided to kick in? who knows...

a couple matches later...
we're supposed to be the first robot over the bridge, in tandem with another. the (same) driver i guess hit the trigger on the joystick, and the pneumatics of our bridge resetter actuated, hitting the ground, then released, rising back into its initial position. within this second, the driver positioned the robot such that the resetter was actually under the edge of the bridge...of course, since the view from the alliance stations aren't that great, this was un noticed until the resetter released, completely removing the bridge from the 4x6 on which it rested! NO robots made it over in that match...and i don't imagine that we were very popular with the other teams :-D

[Joe Lambie]

ALright i got one here. Its the 2000 Midwest Regional. Im a sophomore and pumped up about my first match driving ever, except i have an unknown surprise waiting for me. Over the day on Practice Day we had been making adjustments to the drive and at somepoint had disconnected the the motors for some reason. Well something happened to one when they reconnected them. Well, unknown to anyone the match started, and all of a sudden TOBOR III was doing doughnuts for some unbegotten reason. Well after about 30 seconds of looking over the joysticks and connections and practically making a mess of myself, i dicovered that by running the joysticks oppisite of each other the robot would go staight. Well after manuevering under the bar i was able to bring the robot up the ramp and hang from the bar to score the 10 points, even though we still did lose the match. Regardless, it was determined a motor was wired backwards causing one joystick to have its controls reversed, and I impressed everyone by getting to the bar, and had a most stressing but fun introduction to the world of Driving for FIRST.
I Have many more stories about matches if anyone wants to hear some more( ie. "winning" the play of the day award MMR 2002, I Believe a guy named Baker called that almost immediately after the match).

[Wetzel]

Some of the best storys happen after the competition part of the day is over...

Hotel+college students+bucket of water+second floor+wet Dave+Dave's revenge=great story

Stop by
Tigerbolt Chat, be warned, it can be nuts most of the time.


Wetzel
~~~~~~~~~~~
Lazy Bum
H:\Limp Bizkit\Limp Bizkit - Faith.mp3

[sidewinder]

High school students- hotel- appoxy- mountain dew- window - 6th story---------------------- video tape.........................

[Jeff Rodriguez]

Originally posted by Joel J.
The year: 2002... the end

Hell yeah!!
but i got another one also:

Way back in 1999: the year of the floppy, my first year. Rage had our trademarked arm, as always, i was a rookie arm driver, and we we average. In the best match we had that year i don't even remember the score. Anyways, it goes like this.
We were against some team with a big basket that was made of some sort of wires or tubing for walls. The game progressed, and it came down to the final thirty seconds or so. Everyone prepared for lifting their baskets of floppies up. As we lifted ours up in the last few seconds, the basket got caught in the other teams wire basket thing. Me being a freshman, not knowing rules too well, and being really aggresive, started prying our basket out of theirs. Exactly how i don't know, but it ended up with me knocking the other robot over. It didn't just fall though, it fell, hit the outside pipe border, and smacked the top of one of the camera men's cameras, and knocked him over.
i believe i saw his video later, and it was the funniest video ever. A regular match then some sort of problem, you couldn't tell from the angle, and then smack the camera just whacked and it was then filming the floor.
Good times.

Story 2:
"KILL THAT GOAL!!! KILL THAT GOAL!!!''
there's probly 6 people who know what that means, but it was the best moment i've had in four years

[Ashley Weed]

Oh... so many to choose from that I don't know where to start. One that will live on for ever:

Nationals 2002... Newton Division.... my team (84) had been dreading a match against MOE since the day we heard they were in our division. Finally, on day three of competition, or last match would become a nightmare. When we found out that we would be against MOE, myself, the other driver, and our coach immediately started planning and stratezizing. However, as usual, every thing you plan for does not happen, and something else totaly different occurs. I can't remember who we were with, but MOE was with 710.... the match began, we went out in high gear, and went straight for MOE's armpit. It was almost a complee deadlock in the middle of the field. Come to find out when we hit MOE, we jumped thier arm, and were on top of it. They had two goals barely in, we continued all efforts to push them out. The match ended, and we had no idea if the goals were over or not. Myself, the other driver, and our coach stood nervously with our alliance partners on the sidelines. It took a very long time for the judges/refs to call the match. When it was finally announced, MOE had been disqualified. Eventhough, we did not complete our task, we were able to meet up with them later at the PA Robot Challenge, and succeed at what we wanted to do.

*I attached a photo that captured the moment at Nationals. Our floor team and our alliance's floor team are overlooking the field, while on the right hand side, Chuck sits atop MOE's arm.

[Melissa H.]

Originally posted by Wetzel
Some of the best storys happen after the competition part of the day is over...

Hotel+college students+bucket of water+second floor+wet Dave+Dave's revenge=great story

Yup. Share these kind of stories too!

[SkitzoSmurf]

Since it was such a big topic on here, I think everyone will know what I am talking about(ahhheeemmm, RICK). The best match ever happened at Battlecry III in the finals.

[Thegreatvronica]

I have a LOT of good ones from two years ago. The game with the balancing of the two goals.

First ff, I was on team 249 and that year I was the driver of the component on our robot that lifted the goal. (Yeah we were successful at lifting a 73 lb goal at the front of the robot. We came in 2nd at Nationals in the Archimedes Division that year!)

Anyway, what happened was our strategy was to grab a goal while one of our alliance partners grabbed the other one. The alliance partner would then have to drive up one side of the ramp first (robot in middle of ramp, goal on outside) so this would cause one side of the ramp to be down and the other side to be up. The side that was up would be the side my team was on with the goal. You see, our robot had these monster wheels with great traction! And so the height of them were just enough so that when the ramp came down, the end would sit on our wheels. So the game starategy was the robot would be on the teter totter thingie (balancer/ramp) and we would be on the other side with the goal in the air. Just high enough so that we could go forward, and sit the goal on the ramp. As we sat the goal down, the balance ramp would come down on that end and sit on our whels. As soon as it touched our wheels, we released the goal and drove backwards into the scoring zone. And it worked most of the time. A few times we had roblems with the hook unlatching. But it worked a lot in Nationals. Anyway, as the ramp was coming down, the other team panicked and thoht we needed room and drove back. But they drove back too far and decided to drive back forward really quickly. WEll, the result of that was they hit the goal that we were sitting on the ramp, knocked it forward and it fell the long way on the ramp. The thing about it is, it still balnced! It was a great site! We didn't get the score for balancing though cause it was supported by the metal bar. But it was still a great match!!!!

[Thegreatvronica]

Robot game year - 2001 Goal/ramp/balancing

Let's just say when we lifted the goal to be set on the ramp, the driver wasn't all the way forward as he should have been and therefore, when we drove backwards (the ramp was sitting on our wheels) the goal wasn't on the ramp far enough and it fell. luckily the alliance partner pulled forward as SOON as they saw it dropping and SAVED THE DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Kaelia]

Hmm..last year at the Motorola Regionals, during one of the seeding matches, our robot got into a tug of war with another robot (honestly can't remember which...) Two tug of wars, actually, since both bots could grab two goals. Well...our robot ended up being pushed against the side rail, and somehow drove over some balls so that it was only on one wheel (the wheel against the side rail). Despite this, the other robot STILL couldn't take the goals from us! It was awesome!

[Thegreatvronica]

Team 830 GO RAT PACK!!!!!!!



An engineer, a rookie of course, made a bet with me that the robot would NOT weigh over 130 lbs. Of course, I'm gonna take this bet because I'm a veteran robotics girl and i know good and well the robot will weigh over 130. (Especially since he was dead set on puttin all these steel parts on the robot, one of which was a HUGE steel bumper.) SO anyway., for every pound overweight we are, that's the dollar amoount of dinner that he owed me. So it turns out we are like 30 or 40 lbs overweight, a $40 dinner for me! Yay for me!!!!!!! Of course that bumper comes to be named - yes you got it - Veronica's dinner.


Oh yeah and at dinner, the most hilarious phone prank ever. On the guy sitting a few chairs from me at the table! HIlarious!!!!!!!!!

[T967]

We got stuck up against two robots in st. louis cause or alliance was dead, and actually won with a qf score of 90.

[Ameya]

This happened when I was a freshman back in 2000 at the J&J mid-atlantic regional. We started off with two-wheel drive tank steering, which we had never tested on the carpet. In our first few practice matches, it didn't work. We could go forward, but we couldn't turn, and when we tried to turn, our traction caused us to nearly rip up the carpet. The judges told us we had to do something about it or we would be disqualified for damaging the field.

We removed the treads on the non-drive wheels. Now we didn't rip up the carpet anymore, but we were not maneuverable at all, and we lost our first several matches. By the end of the first day, we were close to dead last place.

The nexy day, someone realized that we needed to replace our non-drive wheels with casters. But where do we get casters? We checked small parts, but they didn't have any. Finally, someone came up with a brilliant idea: our CART had casters. So we traded casters for wheels. Now, instead of a non-turning robot and a maneuverable cart, we had a turning robot and a non-turning cart.

It then became clear that we were amazingly fast. We consistently beat our opponents to the opposite side of the field to grab both black balls. In one match we went from 34th seed to 19th seed. We slowly climbed up the rankings.

For our last qualifying match, we knew that ChiefDelphi was going to be one of the robots. We all hoped that they would be our partner, because they had an amazing robot. When the alliance was announced, we were disappointed to learn that we were going to be on opposing alliances. We all thought we were going to lose. 5 seconds before the end of the match, the ChiefDelphi alliance was barely ahead of us. Both of their robots were hanging from the bar. We flew up the ramp and slammed into CD's partner. It started swinging back and forth on the bar, then FELL. But now it was on the ramp, which still counted for 5 points and would have won the match. But their robot was top-heavy and had a stabilizing wheel on the back, which at the end of the match was touching the ground off the ramp, so they didn't get the 5 points, and we won the match.

We made it into elims and won the regional, then won the Philadelphia regional the next week.

So much fun to go from dead last to first place